Other Kingdoms

Chapter Five

Harold was right. Gatford was gorgeous. I believed it from my first view. I had reached the crest of a hill that overlooked… what? A sight no Technicolor image could match, much less surpass. Vivid colors—lustrous green for the carpeting of grass; deep-colored green for the foliage of ancient, warplimbed trees and distant mountain growth; pale, ethereal violet for the sky. And in the midst of this unearthly scene, an eye-catching gray stone cottage with a sloping roof of slate tiles, a covered chimney, two windows, and what appeared to be an open, welcoming doorway.

Below me was a modest stone enclosure. For a cow? I wondered. A sheep, a horse? Behind that was a mini-grove of what looked like pine trees and another tree (or giant bush) with a closely packed bouquet of orange yellow flowers topping it. Through the background of this idyllic landscape was a narrow, gently flowing stream. Heaven, I thought. A universe apart from Brooklyn, New York, a triple-cosmos distant from Captain Bradford—what was his last name again? I could not recall. Or chose not to, gazing at this vista of paradise.

Immediate questions vied for my attention. Was this the cottage Harold told me to buy? That was too coincidental to accept. In any case, was the cottage for sale or rent? If so, how would I pay for it? My army discharge pay would give me a few months’ rent, I assumed. But purchase? With what, my lump of gold? Hardly. The gold was, likely, worth more than the cottage—if it was for sale, and who would sell and depart from this ambrosial spot? No, the gold had to be sold. But to who? (Whom?) No idea.

And so I stood there wondering, conjecturing, dreaming, for a long time. Until the sunlight had shifted and shadows began to creep across my property. (In my dreaming, I was already its owner.)

Realizing, then, that I was much in need of something to eat and a place to sleep for the coming night, I stood, grimacing as I always did when exerting pressure on my hip and leg, and started in the direction I took to be toward the town.

As I have often been, my geographical instinct was completely awry. Not—except for mounting hunger and hip-leg discomfort—that I minded. Why? Because (despite the fact that each ensuing view could not possibly equal the breathless delight of my first vision) I was exposed—or exposed myself, to be strictly accurate—to a virtually endless panorama of exquisite (to me, anyway) properties. A brick cottage in varied shades of pink, its face almost covered by an immense rosebush—with two three-sectioned leaded windows on its first and second floor, a gray wood door on the first, a sloping, dark brown tile roof. In front of the cottage was a panoply of spring flowers in yellow, orange, white, and different shades of red; two great cypress trees stood like sturdy guardians near the front edge of the garden, and the property had (not surprisingly) deep green lawns and dark green trees. No stream here. It wasn’t necessary.

A double-chimneyed, slate-roofed cottage made of mottled, textured stone and matrix of chalk and green sand. (I was told this later, lest you think I was an architectural scholar.) The design (I was also later informed) was foursquare—windows evenly placed with a central door, this one with a rose-hooded archway; hedges and trees and bright green lawns covered the rest of the property. Another eyecatching masterpiece. In the distance, the stream again. Perfect.

A red brick beauty with a heavily thatched roof that reached almost to the ground, windows on the second floor wearing hoods of straw. Enormous trees behind it, limbs in twisted growth, foliage thick. A long row of hedges in front, beyond that the sea green lawn. Far off, a slight view of the stream. Perfect again.

I might have walked (or rather, limped) the day away if I’d allowed it to happen. As it was, I saw a good many more of cottaged properties than I have described. You get the point, though. If Gatford was a beautiful woman, I had fallen hopelessly in love with her.

My tale grows darker here.

Access to the village—which I finally located in the middle of the afternoon (was that the “middle” Harold warned me to avoid?) was across a bridge that had none of the charm I’d seen repeatedly while searching for the village. Instead, the three-arched stone bridge was dark brown in color, approaching black. Its broadwall was cracked and broken, its dirt walk overgrown with dying weeds. Its two stream footings (the stream was wider here) looked on the verge of crumbling. The entire appearance of the bridge was one of—how shall I put it? If the bridge could speak, it would surely say, “Don’t bother crossing me, you aren’t wanted on the other side,” the other side conveying two visions, both ominous. One, an expanse of yellowing lawn on which two blackbirds sat like miniature statues; were they statues or real, unmoving creatures?

They were real, for they flapped away (sluggishly) as I started across the bridge. Did I imagine a sensation of physical discomfort as I crossed? Probably—the appearance of the bridge was certainly enough to put one “off one’s game” as they express it in Blighty. Whatever the reason, I felt undeniably queasy. Which feeling did not abate on the other side, because of the second vision—what might have been taken initially for a church, but then as a construction fully as menacing as (or more so than) that of the bridge. Its belfry turret, churchlike façade, and arched windows were all encased or framed with lumps of limestone and flint. On each corner of the thatch-covered roof was a tower. On top of one—it seemed mockingly to me—stood a stone cross. On top of the other three were the stone figures of great birds about to take flight. I could not imagine anyone sitting in that Gothic structure, seeking God. On the contrary, to me (or to my Arthur Black persona; even at eighteen it was present) it seemed more like a proper setting for one of my later novels. MIDNIGHT ABBEY.

But enough of that. I was not looking for a forbidding first impression. I had loved everything I’d seen until now. Why let Arthur Black’s bleak, impending disposition undo my pleasure? I would not. I moved on.

To more Arthur Black versus Lasting Optimism moments. Who can say which was the victor? It was a battle royal. A nasty squabble, at any rate. For the more I saw of the village, the less enchanted I became. Instead of perfection, the cottages seemed slipshod, thrown up with lack of interest, certainly lack of care. Hurriedly, in fact. As though—

No, no, I struggled. Arthur Black be gone! I didn’t call him by name then; he didn’t exist yet.

But I really had to fight the negative reaction. Oh, it was somewhat better as I reached what I suppose, laughingly, could be described as “downtown” Gatford, a gathering of cottages close together, uninviting shops, and narrow alleys. Not much better.

In one of the alleys, I ran across the Golden Coach, a pub. Not a charmer, not inviting, totally belying its romantic name. But nonetheless a pub, and I was both thirsty and hungry. So I entered same in search of respite. Did I find it? Judge for yourself as I describe what happened.

“ ’Ello, soljer,” said the man behind the counter.

The interior was so dimly lit that I didn’t see him at first, seeing only dark paneled walls, dark chairs and tables, one small window.

I then caught sight of the barkeep, a bulky bearded man with jet-black hair, wearing an oversize red-stained shirt (not with blood, I trusted), his arms and hands thick with beardlike hair. Despite his apelike appearance, he seemed amiable enough. “Y’new in Gatf’d?” he added to his initial greeting.

“Yes, sir, I am,” I responded.

“Just arrived?”

“This morning,” I said.

“Ah-ha.” He nodded as though my reply had some significance, then said, “Wot’s yer name, lad?”

“Alex,” I told him. “Alex White.”

“Alex White,” he repeated. “Good name.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I’m Tom,” he said, extending his right hand.

“Pleased to meet you,” I said, the word “meet” emerging like a wheeze as his bone-crushing grip crushed the bones in my hand. Felt like it, anyway.

“So wot’s yer pleasure, Mr. Whitehead?” he inquired. Jesus, I thought, was getting my last name wrong something in the water? First Harold, now Tom. “Ale,” I told him.

He rattled off the names of seven different brands. I replied that any one would do; give me the one he thought was the best. While he drew the brew (good rhyme, that), I stopped and opened my duffel bag to take out the lump of gold.

If I had placed a giant rearing spider on the counter, I doubt I would have evoked more of a recoil on his part—so excessive that he splashed out half my ale. “Whoa!” he cried.

I could not disguise my surprise: another good rhyme. “What?” I asked.

His next words were equally surprising. “Take it off,” he said, actually he ordered.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, confused.

“I just…” He grimaced as though in anger—or in pain.

A chill ran up my back. He sounded alarmed, almost frightened. I removed the lump of gold from the counter and slipped it into my jacket pocket. “I don’t understand,” I said. “Why does it bother you?”

“Where did you get it?” he asked—again, demanded.

“From a friend,” I said.

“A friend?” he sounded—at the very least—dubious.

“Yes,” I answered. “A British soldier.”

“Named Lightfoot?” he said, he didn’t ask.

Now I was totally perplexed. “Yes, Harold Lightfoot,” I told him, “in France.”

“Why did he give it to you?” he wanted to know.

I was becoming irritated by then. “Because he was dying,” I said coldly.

“Dying.”

“That’s right, dying,” I said.

He stared at me, then said, “Harold Lightfoot.”

“Yes,” I said. I was really angry now. “What’s the problem anyway? It’s just a piece of gold.”

“I know it’s a piece of gold, Whitehead,” he said. Christ! I thought, it’s White! White!

“So?” I demanded now, “What’s the problem?”

His change of manner was as confounding as his obvious dismay had been. He smiled pleasantly. “No problem,” he said, “one doesn’t see gold lumps that big very often, or ever.” He smiled again. “Sorry I railed at you.” I knew, somehow, that he was lying. There was more to this than rarely—or ever—seeing lumps of gold that big. A good deal more. But what?

Our conversation after that—if it could be called a conversation—was empty talk. Where was I from? What was it like in France? Was I planning to stay in Gatford? I soon gave up trying for an explanation of his cold behavior re the lump of gold. Taking my glass of ale and duffel bag across the room, I sat at a table by the window—through which precious little daylight penetrated. There I sat, mulling over the peculiar—aggravating—incident. I took the lump of gold from my jacket and examined it. Mystery on mystery, I thought. What was the answer?

Chapter Six

“Mr. White,” said the quiet voice, making me start.

I looked up. Standing by the table was a shadowy figure.

“Yes?” I said.

“May I sit down?” he asked, sitting down.

Since I did not have to respond to his pointless request, I didn’t. I regarded him as he sat across from me. He was elderly, I saw, lean, his expression sedate. Later, I learned that his sedate expression did not denote peace of mind so much as permanent sedation; he lived on drugs.

“My name is Brean,” he told me, “Michael Brean.” He extended his right hand in a “shake” position. I felt I could not ignore the gesture, so I shook it. “Hello,” I said.

“And hello to you, Mr. White,” he responded. Just as I was wondering how he knew my correct name, he added, “I overheard your discourse with Tom.” Discourse, I thought. Is that what it was?

A few moments’ silence. Then he said, “About your gold.”

Aha! I thought. Suspicion? I suppose.

“May I look at it?” he asked. At that very second, sunset light managed through the grimy window, altering his look of sedation to one of—well, close to it, anyway—menace. “Well, I don’t know,” I heard myself say. Impulsively—unthinkingly.

“Oh, please,” he said, “I’m Gatford’s only jeweler.”

Does that mean anything? I thought. Then greed o’erwhelmed suspicion, as Shakespeare might have put it. Might he actually purchase the lump of gold? I set it on the table before him. “Let me know what you think,” I said.

Did I imagine it, or did he really lick his upper lip, really bare his teeth? It must have been imagined; another early sign of Arthur Black’s bugbears. Or else it really happened. In light of future events, it was certainly possible. But let that go for now. I know it was true that Mr. Brean eyed the gold lump with a covetous eye. The breath he drew in was a strained breath. The rapidity with which he unpocketed his spectacles was not imagined.

He must have examined the lump of gold for several minutes (it seemed longer) before he said, in a remarkably calm voice (it occurred to me later), “Yes, it’s gold, all right. Pure gold.”

“Care to buy it?” I asked quickly—greedily—obviously.

He looked at me with hooded eyes. Was he suspecting me now? Was I a thief? Had I purloined the lump? Or—more likely—found it by some roadside and made no attempt to find its rightful owner? All visible on his sedate but questioning features.

Then he said, “Well, let’s discuss it.”

A dropping sensation in my stomach. He wasn’t going to make an offer. Nothing like it.

“Sure,” I said. Then I added, suspicious again, “I know it must be valuable, though.”

“Oh, undoubtedly,” he said, apparently agreeing.

I felt better then. Part of me cautioned, Don’t let him flummox you now. But not so strongly as it might have been. I was, fundamentally, ready to do business.

“You got it from—where?” the old man asked.

“A soldier friend in France,” I said.

“Lightfoot.” He nodded.

“Yes.”

“And he got it from?” he asked.

“His family,” I answered.

“Ah.” He nodded again. “His family.” I didn’t like the way he said that.

The conversation—or, as you may suspect, the interrogation—went on for some time. He asked me if I knew that ancient Egyptians were obsessed by gold. (To vindicate his own obvious inclination?) Pharaohs were buried in gold coffins; they referred to gold as “the flesh of the gods.” Although gold had little practical use (he assumed that I knew), it had always possessed a magical enchantment for mankind—and, clearly, him.

Gradually, my suspicions faded. Not about the lump of gold. I grew more curious about its source all the time. No, my suspicion regarding Mr. Brean. It became obvious that he wanted to own the gold, that he regarded it as a highly desirable piece of Nature’s handiwork. Simply put, he wanted to purchase it at a price.

Which is what it sold for—a price, that being one hundred pounds. I knew it had to be worth more, and so did he. Accordingly, in the written contract (I thought I was being very shrewd insisting on it), Mr. Sedate Face agreed that if the lump of gold brought in more return from the city emporium he did business with (never identified), he would share the profit with me. How this worked out—shall I hint horrendously?—I will reveal later. Another mystery on mystery.

So the deal was consummated, as they say in business circles. I accompanied Mr. Brean (against the advice of the barkeep Tom, who told me to throw “the damned lump” into the nearest lake and forget about it) to his office, which was really his home, an obviously expensive “cottage.” There, he gave me what cash he had on hand (fifty-seven pounds and change) and filled out an I.O.U. for the remainder. He scoffed repeatedly at Tom’s dire warning. “These people are obsessed with superstition,” he told me. Obsession again, I thought. He seemed obsessed with the word.

Which was the end of that. Mr. Brean walked me to the Gateford Inn. (I learned, later, that Gateford was the original name of the community.) There, I acquired a room—I seemed to be the only customer—had a meal in their dining room, empty as I dined, retired to my room, and fell asleep quite rapidly.

To suffer with a dreadful nightmare. In which I attended a double funeral—for my mother and sister. The dreadful element was that the good (bad) Captain met me at the door, took me aside from the other guests, whoever they were (I didn’t know any of them), and informed me that it had been decided by the navy “front office” that they would pay only a “limited” amount for the service, and therefore… well, I’d see.

I saw, all right. Both my mother and Veronica lay in stained, ragged cardboard boxes, both wearing torn, muddy nightgowns. Worse than that, neither had been made up in any way. Their hair was uncombed and tangled, and their faces looked as they had when they died—gray and twisted, some of their teeth showing behind black, retracted lips.

I screamed at my father, “How the hell could you have it done this way?! Are you insane?!”

Yes, that’s right. He smiled at me, that damned, cold, superior smile. “What do you know?” he asked.

“This is monstrous!” I yelled. “Monstrous!”

Still that maddening smile. “What do you know?” he asked again. (Which is when—sweating and shaking—I woke up in a tangle of sheet and blanket.) “God damn you!” I muttered as though it had really happened. I lay there until the shaking had stopped. And I knew, at that moment, that I would never go home. Home, I thought with murderous contempt. It wasn’t that anymore. I’d stay in Gatford. If I went back to Brooklyn, I’d kill him. No, I’d stay in Gatford.

I didn’t know then that it was a mistake.

Chapter Seven

The cottage I rented resembled a Nazi war bunker. I was about to write “reminded me of a…” but that would be inaccurate, of course. In no way could it have reminded me of a military structure used in World War Two. You recall that I am writing this in 1982. I can therefore state, with impunity, that it looked like a Nazi cement (or was it concrete?) bunker. Not that it matters a damn. Stay with me. I’m eighty-two years old and have a tendency to ramble. I assure you that the weird stuff will be forthcoming—word of honor, Arthur Black, Esq.

Back to the cottage I rented. It resembled—sorry, just kidding. It was located on the edge of town. Not too attractive, the grounds (limited) overgrown with weeds and huge fernlike bushes, one of which resembled (no, not a Nazi bunker) a rearing lizard. It even had a yellow eye, a bright flower.

As to the rest of it. Not much to brag about. Very little, for that matter. Massive, lumpy granite walls, one recessed window, a shapeless doorway with an ill-hanging door, one story with a plank ceiling forming what I suppose you would call a second floor; it was called a “crogloft,” meant for hay. This was reached by a ladder and was dark and devoid of air. To be my bedroom, I realized, although it was not roomy enough for a bed, I’d sleep on a hay-stuffed pallet. I suppose I had little justification to complain, though, since the rent was a pound and a half per month. And at least the steeply pitched tile roof looked sound.

The steeply pitched, “sound” roof leaked like a sieve. I woke up in the middle of my first night in Comfort Cottage (named, I am convinced, by some sardonic humorist) near adrift on my pallet, my clothes ready for hanging on a line.

In somewhat of a testy mood, I trudged—deliberately wearing still-soggy apparel—to the farm of my landlord. He expressed deep surprise at my appearance and patiently explaining manner. Remember, I was only eighteen but did not wish to establish my stay in Gatford as a teenage curmudgeon. His reaction, accordingly—I learned a mini-lesson from that—was cordial. He would dispatch a repairman that very day to assess needed repair to my roof. He stated that the cottage had been unrented since 1916 and he hadn’t seen to its maintenance since.

That afternoon, the repairman arrived. And my adventure enlarged.

“Afternoon,” he said, a wiry man in his—no way of knowing, could be forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, or more; he looked fit enough to manage any age. He extended his hand and gave me a grip that made me wince and remember Harold’s forceful handshake.

“I’m Joe Lightfoot,” he told me.

I’m sure I gaped. “Lightfoot?” I murmured.

“That’s the name,” he said.

I tried to speak but couldn’t. I swallowed with effort and regained my voice. At least enough of it to ask, “You’re Harold’s—relative?” I hesitated before finishing the question, not wanting to name a specific relation—uncle, brother, father.

His answer, as they say, floored me. “Who?” was what he said.

“Harold,” I mumbled. “Harold Lightfoot.” I could not believe that such a name was commonplace.

But it was. I learned, from him, that Lightfoot was a commonplace family name in Gatford, had been for centuries. He had never heard of Harold—although he did know a Harry Lightfoot.

He asked me who Harold Lightfoot was, and I told him. He said it was known that several young men from Gatford had enlisted in the British Army; at least one of whom he knew of had been killed. His mother still lived in Gatford. Somewhere in the woods. He’d never heard of Harold’s death.

And that was that. (For the moment) the rest was tile roof and leakage. He retrieved the ladder from inside the cottage, leaned it against an outside wall, and scrambled up to the roof. There, he seemed to know exactly where the worst leak was (above my pallet) and repaired it with some dark concoction he’d brought with him in a pail; he had the “spreading tool” (I don’t know what else to call it) inserted beneath his belt like a leak-combating weapon. He also pulled the soggy pallet outside and placed it in the one—miraculous, I thought—patch of sunlight available. He’d replace the pallet the following day, he said; continue his repairs. He suggested that, for the night, I sleep on my army overcoat.

Which I did. And although it rained again, I remained dry, slept well and dreamless (I was grateful for that) until early morning. Joe was already at work on the roof. I had brought, from the village, a loaf of rye bread, a thick wedge of cheddar cheese, and a bottle of milk. This I had for breakfast, offering some to Joe, who thanked me but said he’d “already supped” on oatmeal and coffee.

I thought, since there was nothing for me to do, that I’d go for a walk through the countryside. As I started away from the cottage, Joe called down, “Stay on the path, young man!” I made nothing of the remark. I should have.

The path leading into Gatford woods was distinct enough. In its early stages, it had flat granite rocks lining its direction. Only as it led into the woods did the stone lining discontinue. Still, the path was clearly visible. It seemed (only seemed, I told myself, not wishing to succumb to negative fancy) to become more quiet as I entered a thickening section of the woods—more trees, more bushes, more grass and flowers—a little farther in, the sound of the “babbling brook” commenced that way. As I neared the stream. Or the stream neared me. I later wondered.

Why I made my mistake so soon, ascribe to carelessness—or, more likely, to paying no attention to Joe’s words. At any rate, I left the path and walked over a carpeting of leaves toward the luring sound of the stream. A minute (or less or more) in, I reached the bank of the stream and found there, as though waiting for me (avast with negative fancies! I ordered myself), a fallen birch trunk on which I perched myself and gazed at the smoothly running water. It was a hypnotic sight. The water, in a shaft of sunlight, looked silvery. I remember sighing with pleasure at the sight. At that moment, I felt inspired, not angry as I’d been before; determined not to return to Brooklyn. This was so much more peaceful and comforting. All the new elements in my life seemed attractive now, so reassuring. Even Comfort Cottage was attractive in its own lumpy, shapeless, leaking fashion—no, it wouldn’t leak now with Joe repairing the roof. The rye bread was delicious, the yellow cheese, the creamy milk. All was pleasing.

In this billow of appreciation, I picked up a small rounded stone and tossed it into the stream. It plopped delightfully.

At which I thought (or thought I thought), Don’t do that, boy.

Strange, I was sure I thought. Why did such a reaction occur to me? Boy? I’d never conceived of myself as boy. Why now? I picked up another stone.

I said no, the thought immediately came to me. I started. Then, as though in reprisal, the foliage of the trees I sat beneath began to shake. And I recalled—as though I actually heard his voice again, Joe calling down from the roof, “Don’t leave the path, young man!”

I pushed to my feet. The pain in my hip and leg—which had not been more than mildly annoying for months—suddenly flared, and I would have fallen had I not thrown down my right hand, jarring its palm on the birch trunk. I cried out, faire la move (grimacing in French) in pain; it felt as though I’d come in contact with an electric shock. Rearing up, as best I could—very clumsily, in fact—I lurched back toward the path. I thought.

I couldn’t find it. The damn thing’s vanished! I reacted. Where the hell is it? I knew I hadn’t walked that far from it. A minute? Less! God damn it! I felt genuine fury at my inability to regain the path. No, God damn it, not inability! Something was playing a trick on me! A God damn, vicious trick! Why? What had I done to offend that “something”? Tossed a God damn stone into the God damn stream? I ran and ran.

Sense took hold of me at that point. A voice inside my head that said, Calm down, you idiot. You’re letting your imagination run away with you. It was your own mind—enjoying that state of inner pleasure—that told you not to disrupt the perfection of the streamside loveliness by throwing a stone in the water. Then a follow-up thought on the same subject, a dumb reaction to the trembling foliage, an ungainly stand due to your still-healing wound causing a loss of balance and a palm-down fall on the birch trunk, the “electric shock” no more than a tender nerve’s response to the impact. A moronic, lurching run followed. Stupid, I told myself. Totally stupid.

Looking around, I saw the path; waiting, I thought at first. No, not waiting. I scolded myself. Just there. I reached it and turned back toward my cottage. As I did, I saw another path I hadn’t noticed earlier. I stopped for a few moments to look at it. The path disappeared into tree-filled thickness. I suggest you don’t enter it, I said to myself. No need to suggest it, my mind replied. You’ve had enough for one day.

Which is when I saw the feather. It was white—startlingly white—lying at the foot of the new path. I leaned over and picked it up. As I did, a wind began to blow through the overhead tree foliage. I shuddered, my skin erupting into gooseflesh. Instantly, I dropped the feather; I’d had barely a moment to look at its delicate beauty. Enough!—cried my mind. Reason was abolished. Primeval fear swept over me, and I ran again. Imagining—or not—that I heard a faint voice calling out to me from the woods inside the previously unnoticed path. No! (The thought was both enraged and terrified.) I ran until I saw my cottage in the distance. I slowed down then but walked rapidly until I reached it.

“I wondered how soon you’d be back,” Joe said. He was still at work on the roof. It seemed a bit late to me, and it was. I hadn’t been gone that long, had I? I let the question lapse. After what I’d been through.

“You left the path, didn’t you?” Joe said, telling me.

I drew in a rasping breath. “How do you know?” I asked.

“You’re flushed,” said Joe. “Your cheeks are red.”

Damn, I thought. I hadn’t mulled it over, but I believe I didn’t intend to tell him what happened. But I did, the words spilling quickly.

“Wait a second,” Joe told me. He came down the ladder and stood before me. Listening patiently to my semi-breathless account, then finally smiling. “I told you not to leave the path,” he said.

“You think that… something really happened?” I could only call it “something”; it was the best I could manage.

“Of course it did,” he said without hesitation.

“What?” I think I demanded.

“It was the wee folk,” he said. “You’re lucky they let you escape.”

I gaped at him in wordless disbelief. “The wee folk?” I said.

“Yes.” He nodded, still smiling. “The little people.”

“Little people,” I said, completely dumbfounded now.

“Yes, little people,” he repeated. “Those who live in Middle Earth.”

Chapter Eight

Captain Bradford Smith White, USN, was, if anything, a stark realist. Neither Veronica nor I—nor Mother, for that matter—were encouraged (say, rather, “permitted”) to express an opinion unless—and even then—we could “back it up” with factual information. This was the attitude I was raised with. Facts first, then opinions. Verify all statements. Especially those with any “outré” element. Father loved that word.

You can deduce then with what incredulous doubt I stared at Joe. Inbred from birth, my cynicism reigned supreme. Oh, I was frightened enough by what happened to me when I was sitting by the stream and when I picked up that white feather. But those were nerve-affected incidents. Explaining them as Joe did? “Persiflage.” Another of Dad’s favorite words, however badly defined. “Poppycock.” Another favorite, perhaps more accurately used. Were Joe’s words poppycock? I thought they probably were.

“You don’t believe me,” Joe said, as though reading my mind.

“Well… Mr. Lightfoot,” I began, politely if dubiously.

“Joe,” he corrected.

“Joe,” I said. “You’re… well, you’re asking me—expecting me—” I added quickly, still in the thought (prejudice) realm of Captain You Know Who. “—to swallow [was that too harsh?]—to accept what you’re telling me.”

“Why?” he asked. “It’s the truth.”

“Wee folk?” I said—not too scornfully, I hope. “Little people?” I made a scoffing sound. “Why not invisible people?”

“They’re that, too,” Joe answered. “You didn’t see them, did you?”

He sounded so gullible to me. Not me; the Captain’s welldisciplined son. I could only speak his name. My tone was clear enough, though—disbelieving, almost pitying—that I could see him tensing, face and body.

“Very well,” he said, his voice stiffened. “Believe what you will. But don’t go off the path again if you value your life.”

The way he said it made me shiver. And realize, in an instant, that he only meant me well.

“I’m sorry,” I told him. I meant it sincerely. “I didn’t mean to be insulting. It’s just—” I was on the verge of telling him about the Captain’s influence, then decided against it. “I’m sorry,” I repeated, even more sincerely this time. He was a good soul who meant no harm. Who was I to be so insulting to him? And I had been insulting, no doubt of that.

The Joe I’d accepted him to be from our meeting—genial and helpful—returned with my apology. He smiled and I smiled back; I tried to make it genuine. “All right,” he said.

I hoped I was not reverting to insult when I chuckled. “It is quite a lot for me to—buy, though.” Was “buy” the wrong word? I wondered.

Not for Joe. He chuckled back at me. “Well, yes, it is,” he agreed. “I should have given it to you slower.”

There it is, I thought. Nothing but goodwill toward me, that was Joe.

“I was just relieved to see you back in one piece,” he said. I tried to maintain my feeling of camaraderie with him, but I must confess, those three words jarred me. In one piece?

I said them aloud, trying to sound amused.

“Well, just a joke,” he said. “Although—”

My smile and positive feeling vanished as he let the last word hang. I couldn’t help it. “Although—!” I challenged.

“Nothing,” he said. “I spoke out of turn.”

Yes, you did, God damn it! My mind ranted. Fortunately, I didn’t vocalize the complaint. Instead, I said, “You shook me up a bit.”

“I’m sorry,” he apologized now. “I was trying to warn you. I like you, Alex.”

“I like you, too,” I managed to say, trying to recoup some semblance of amiability.

Trying too hard, I said, “So tell me about—”

“The faeries?” he asked. Testing me, I’m now sure.

Oh, Christ! I acted most adversely. “Fairies?” (I spelled them wrong at the time.)

“That’s one of their names,” he said.

I could not prevent my tongue from forming the (yes, very insulting) words, “Tiny, little ladies in silk gowns, flitting about with their tiny, little wings?”

He tensed again but then controlled it. “Some of them,” he said patiently.

Oh, persiflage, poppycock, shit! I thought. “Come on, Joe,” I pleaded irritably. “Enough!”

“You don’t believe me,” he said.

“I don’t believe that,” I told him.

“Any of it?” he asked.

I had to let that sit for the moment. Finally, I answered, “I’m not sure.”

“What part?” he said.

I had to think that over, too. “I believe that… something happened out there,” I said. “As for the rest…”

“Well, let it go,” he said.

“No!” I shook my head determinedly. “Let me have it. All of it.”

Their realms are Neverland, Eden, Emhain, Middle Earth, and much more. (Joe told me; I believe it was Joe, maybe not.)

They move through the woods, usually unseen.

They are solitary, rarely meeting with humans.

They can shape-shift, often appearing as animals. I had a big problem with that one.

They can make grass move and leaves rustle without a breeze. (That got to me.)

They can intrude on thoughts. (As did that.)

They can appear to you if you keep an open mind.

They are intrigued by people though avoiding them.

They are generally distrustful and disgusted by human behavior. (That I could believe even if I couldn’t believe in faeries, whatever the hell they were.)

How could I detect them? (1) A sudden trembling of leaves. (2) Sudden gooseflesh. (3) Loss of time. All three made me think. Those things occurred.

“I know you’d rather not,” Joe finished. “But if you want to see them, spend a lot of time sitting in nature, meditating.” I was surprised he knew that word. “Do something creative.” (Where did that come from? I wondered.) “Stay clean. Sing a lot.”

Stay clean? I thought. In Comfort Cottage? And sing a lot? I had little voice. If I did believe these things, my singing would scare the hell out of any little people within listening range.

“All right,” I said, still not giving up. “What do I look for? What do they look like?”

A mistaken query. They could look like anything, he told me. Great, I thought, here it comes. It depends on their whims. A tree? Why not? A firefly? Of course. A dwarf or a mermaid? Sure. A flower, a plant? Indeed. Jesus God in downtown Pandemonium! I raged within. How could I possibly believe what Joe was saying? He’d gone too far. His explanations were ridiculous. Ridiculous!

Only one thing bothered me. “Avoid middle—,” Harold had said before he died. I’d been trying to guess “the middle of what.” Had he meant Middle Earth? Was that it, after all? If so, why?

I tried to keep myself as clean as possible. Not because of what Joe said, but simply because I’d been raised that way. Mother always looked immaculate. Veronica always smelled as sweet as a rose. The Captain? Obviously adhering to naval regulations—clean as a damn whistle. So it was my training—by example, not regulation. The average teenage boy sloppiness did not exist in me. The average teenage boy anything was missing, I regret to say. Which is why I was so cool and critical about everything. But especially about Joe’s admonitions.

I did not sit around a lot, meditating. God knows I did not sing a lot. If Joe’s words had rung true to me, I might have vocalized night and day on the premise that my froglike tenor would keep the wee folk far away from me in droves. What I did—and I swear it was not for fairy-precaution—was consider the creative suggestion. I had for some years—since I was fifteen, as I remember—harbored the secret notion of trying to become a novelist. When I was twelve, maybe thirteen, I launched from said harbor a vessel of poetry authorship. A vessel completely unseaworthy, I hasten to add. No verser, living or dead, had a thing to worry about. A sample? When Columbus sailed, he said, “At least—I’ll find a short route to the East.” Beyond that, it got really atrocious. Not to me, of course. I was a cocky twelve-year-old. Nothing got through to me. Especially when Mother praised my attempt. Veronica, more honestly, wasn’t sure that I was treading on the heels of Robert Browning—or Jim Browning, who, at the time, murdered his mother and wife, and prior to his hanging, wrote a poem that began, Mother, mother, why did I smother—you and Geraldine?—That was mean. In brief, I gave up poetry (I never showed anything to Father) and retreated to reading Gothic novels. Odd, I never before attributed Arthur Black’s subject matter to that.

So there I was, eighteen, with a hidden agenda in mind. An agenda for which Joe had inadvertently stirred the coals, igniting flames. I say “inadvertently” because I know that Joe was unaware of my undeclared ambition; he meant only to advise—and warn—me of the mystical world “out there.”

So—fool that I was—I commenced to write a novel. I blush to reveal the title: Terror in the Trenches. That was the best one. I refuse to tell you what the others were. It had to do with a young man—odd choice?—who, assigned to the Gallic trenches, proceeded—personally—to decimate the entire Boche Army. I did manage to include some of the more graphic truths about trench life—rats devouring dead bodies, for instance—but fundamentally, the story was one of unabated heroics and finally, graphic demise on the bayonet of a chortling German. The book was fifty-seven pages long, and that was too much. Review? One word. Godawful. I planned—eighteen and brainless—to submit it to the primo publishers in New York—I’d show the damned Captain!—or, if necessary (most unlikely, I truly believed) London. Fortunately—thank God for the literary world—I never sent it anywhere. Rats (I’m not sure, now, it was rats) chewed up the manuscript. Breaking my author’s heart, but now, at eighty-two, a source of profound gratitude. I will say that the wheels did begin to turn, later installed on the Arthur Black hearse. The rats—was it rats?—did me a favor.

The next peculiar incident took place a week or so after I had surrendered the notion of becoming a world-renowned novelist. My life, in those days, seemed peculiar in every respect. Certainly, this one was.

It was late night. I was asleep on my pallet—by then I was accustomed to it. Suddenly, (to quote Arthur Black at his worst) there was a pounding on the door below. I woke up with a jar. Who in the hell? I thought. Did fairies knock? Didn’t they just come gliding through the walls? In a state of groggy amusement, I struggled to my feet, managed to descend the ladder without falling to my death, and approached the door, which—did I tell you?—Joe had rehung. All this time, the pounding persisted, accompanied by a faint voice commanding me to “Open up!”

I did as commanded, to see a sight I treasure to this moment: A sweaty, wild-eyed Mr. Sedate Face, whose face, far from sedate, was twisted with fury, teeth bared. “Mr. Brean,” I muttered.

“Don’t ‘Mr. Brean’ me!” he shouted.

“What?” I asked, unable to think of anything else.

“Don’t ‘what’ me, you thieving bastard!” screamed Mr. Brean. That’s right. Screamed. So loud, I jerked back as if from a blow to my solar plexus. (What my father called the stomach.)

“What the hell?” I asked. Not him, probably the universe.

“As if you didn’t know!” he yelled.

Now I was getting peeved. Though “peeved” would hardly be the word for Mr. Brean’s apoplectic rage. “Know what?!” I cried, demanded.

“I suppose you just don’t know,” he bellowed.

“No, I don’t!” I bellowed back. “Why the fuck don’t you tell me?!” I was not inclined to use bad language, but his behavior maddened me.

A heavy stillness fell on Comfort Cottage. I could use a fucking fairy! I thought, thoroughly incensed.

“I’m not sure you do know.” Mr. Brean’s voice was close to human now. Then his features distended again. “No, you do know,” he recanted. “You’re trying to trick me again!”

“And how am I doing that?” I asked, very angry now.

He stood motionless and sweaty for a number of seconds. Then he bared his teeth again, reached into his overcoat pocket—must be cold outside, my mind commented irrelevantly—and drew out a small cloth packet, tied with a knot. It took him near to a minute to unknot it and part two edges of the cloth. I looked down at the contents.

Then looked up at him. He’s gone insane, was my conclusion.

“Well?” he said in a cracking voice.

“Well what?” I retorted, “What?!”

“I suppose you don’t know what it is,” he said; his voice was cracking again. I was beginning to feel sorry for him, he was so pitifully overwrought.

“Damn you!” he erupted then. “Don’t tell me you don’t know what it is!”

I no longer felt sorry for him now. I felt abrupt concern for my existence. “I don’t know what it is,” I told him, as controlled as I could.

“I want my money back,” he said in a trembling, threatening mutter.

“Your money?” I had no idea where that remark came from.

Then it hit me. “Are you telling me that this is—?” I began.

“Yes!” He didn’t let me finish. “It is!” He overturned the cloth.

Drizzling to the floor was a cloud of gray dust.

I stared down, not seeing much, because there was no light in the room. I could not comprehend what I’d seen. Was Brean serious? “You’re telling me—?” I started.

Again, he interrupted. Rabidly. “I’m telling you! You sold me gold! All that’s left is dust!”

“I don’t understand,” I told him weakly.

It seemed as though he shuddered in the darkness. “I think you do,” he said, “and I want my money back or I’ll see you behind bars for the rest of your life.”

I could only stare at him.

Dust? Gray dust?

There was no further conversation. (Had it been a conversation?) Without another word, Mr. Brean whirled and vanished into the night. Leaving one pathetic would-be novelist in a state of absolute confusion. In the morning light—not that I slept a wink from Mr. Brean’s departure to the arrival of the sun—I examined the layer of dust on the downstairs floor. “Examined” is an overstatement. My inspection was tentative, gingerly. For the life of me, I was unable to fathom how a lump of gold (hadn’t Brean—a jeweler—identified it as such?) could be reduced to a pile of dust. Gray, at that.

My confusion was not undone by a visit from Joe that a.m. Mr. Sedate Face was dead, the victim—apparently—of a heart attack. I was spared the prospect of a long gaol sentence. (That’s how they spelled “jail” in those days.) An uncharitable reaction, I concede. But Brean was really nasty to me. Furthermore, I was innocent of any wrongdoing, fully as thunderstruck by the incredible transformation of gold to dust.

So I swept up what was left of my lump of gold and fed it to the lizard fern.

Chapter Nine

Next peculiar incident; onward with my wacko tale. Wacko but, I assert once more, completely true. I had decided, by then, that Mr. Sedate Face had either gone completely mad, or was already mad. Would I have noticed in the pub that afternoon if I hadn’t been intent on selling him the gold? More plausibly, of course, he had devised a plan to get his money back and keep the gold as well. Precious metal into powdery dirt? Nonsense. Brothers Grimm stuff.

Where was I? Yes. I decided to take a walk. No, not sidestepping into the woods—although, by then, I had deduced a “rational” explanation for that incident as well. But better safe than superstitious. As per Joe’s advice, I’d remain on the path. Okay. Well done. A walk on the path, no more.

That was my plan, at any rate. Which I observed in the beginning, not even pausing by the other path to see if the white feather was still there. Idiotic if I had, my mind declared without hesitation. Why would a feather remain in place? A feather, for God’s sake? Subject to any random breeze? That was—

Before my mind could present the word “ridiculous,” I heard a voice calling to me. “Young man!”

I confess to several moments of good sense reversal, several moments of pure primitive dread. It’s a fay-erie! cried my momentarily disabled brain, awareness clobbered. That’s how I thought it was pronounced.

To my credit, I fought it off. Don’t be absurd, I ordered myself; it was not a damn fay-erie! And, with that, I abruptly recalled what I imagined (or thought I imagined) my last day on the path; again, a voice calling me, the words indistinct.

I forced myself to turn. Another moment of temporary trepidation (good phrase, that). Then, once more, bathing my mind with satisfaction, rationality returned. (Not so good a phrase.) It was a woman standing near the foot of the path. A tall red-haired woman dressed in most un-fay-erielike clothes, such as might be worn by any female resident of Gatford. Not a tiny, winged, transparently gowned fay-erie. Well, Joe did say they could shape-shift, my maddening brain insisted on recalling. Oh, shut up! I told my maddening brain.

“Come over here,” the woman said, her voice and smile inviting.

Oh, damn, I thought. Isn’t that the sort of invitation one would expect from the “wee folk”? I had to fight that off as well. I didn’t move, however. I remained fixed in place.

Amazing how a few well-spoken words can totally undo the superstitious angst of any given moment. That was the exact result of what the woman said to me. “Don’t worry, I’m not a faerie. I’m a real person.”

Something was released in me, like an unblocked flow of water, fresh, invigorating water. Returning the woman’s kind smile, I approached her. “There, that’s better,” she said, sounding relieved.

“I’m sorry, I apologize,” I felt obligated to say.

“Not at all,” she said, excusing my dubious behavior. “I don’t know how long you’ve been in Gatford, but if any time at all, you’ve undoubtedly been exposed to local old wives’ tales.”

Or old roofers’ tales, I thought. I returned her renewed smile—it was a lovely smile (on her part, I mean, I don’t know about mine) and said, “I have. A lot of them.”

“Too bad,” she responded. “They can be overdone.”

Indeed, I thought. “They can,” I agreed.

Another smile—completely lovely—as she extended her hand for shaking. “I’m Magda Variel,” she said.

“Alex White,” I told her. Her grip was comforting, her palm warm against mine.

“I’m very pleased to meet you, Alex,” she said.

I nodded. “Thank you,” I repeated. Why did you say that? I questioned myself. Not very gracious. Immediately, I added, “I’m glad to meet you.” Glad? I questioned my brain again. You mean “pleased,” don’t you? Well, what the hell; I let it go. How old was she, anyway?

“Would you like to see where I live?” she asked.

Again, my provoking brain came up with several vexing ideas: The witch inviting Hansel and Gretel into her gingerbread house. A shape-shifted faerie luring me to Middle Earth. A crazy woman asking me to visit in order to dissect me? In one piece, Joe had said.

God, it was hard to fight that off! Near impossible. But I did it, more power to my teenage strength of character—or denseness. I wouldn’t do it now. I was uncomfortable.

Through all this, Magda, the lovely (she was lovely, I realized), tall, red-haired woman, waited patiently, saying finally, “Still uneasy?”

“No,” I lied.

“Come, let me take your arm, then,” she said, taking my arm. I positively shuddered. “Lord, you are afraid,” she said. “I’m sorry. Would you rather not do this?”

“No, I’m sorry,” I lied again, “I have been exposed to too many old wives’ tales.” (“To too”—Arthur Black would have shuddered at that ugly combination; but I was only eighteen, what did I know?)

“Yes, you have,” Magda Variel responded. “Far too many.”

“Onward, then,” I said bravely (at least sensibly).

We walked together into the woods. If A. Black had written that sentence in one of his shock boilers, it would have presaged ghastly events. As it was, our entrance into the silent woods presaged nothing. I thought.

“So tell me,” I said, “these old wives’ tales. Are they all nonsense?”

“Not all,” she answered casually. Evoking another involuntary shudder by her very vulnerable (not too bad a phrase, not too outstanding either) teenage companion. “You’re still afraid,” she said.

“I guess I am, a little,” I admitted. “This has been a most unusual month. I’m trying to deal with it. But it hasn’t been easy.”

“I understand,” she said. “My first year here was very trying—all the stories people told me—that they swore were true.”

“But you said they aren’t all nonsense,” I reminded her.

“That’s right, they’re not,” she told me, “but nothing to be alarmed about.”

“Fay-eries,” I said, “the way I say it. Faeries, then. Do they really exist?”

“Oh, they exist,” said Magda, not realizing that she chilled my bones with the reply. “Not so plentiful as many Gatfordites would have you believe. But some of them are real hooligans mostly. Fooligans.”

“Fooligans?” Despite my uneasiness, the word amused me.

“Hooligans who like to fool you,” Magda said. “I made up the word.”

That evoked a snicker from me. “How do they fool you?” I asked.

“Oh, many ways,” she answered. “Taking things away from you. Bringing unexpected things to you. Making trees or bushes shake. Oh, now you’re frightened again,” she said, reacting to my reflex shudder.

I told her about my experience by the stream that past afternoon. She agreed with me that I had probably misinterpreted the abruptly rustling foliage. On the other hand, it might have been a faerie-induced stir. “If so,” she said, “you’re fortunate they teased you no more than that. They could have done you harm. They probably liked you, though, for some reason.”

“Well, I’m very likable,” I said, the thin waver of my voice revealing my actual emotion—minor terror at her words.

She smiled, knowing what I felt. “You are likeable,” she said, tightening her grip on my arm. I felt a warmth of gratitude for her sympathy. Like a mother, I thought. A beautiful mother.

“Just remember one thing,” she went on, “they cannot—will not harm you if you treat them with respect. If you want, I’ll give you several means of protecting yourself against possible intrusions.”

“Thank you,” I murmured. I was not exactly grateful to her. I would have preferred her to agree with my original estimation, that the entire subject was—sorry—bullshit. Or, as a later spokesman called it, bull pucky. But it wasn’t; if I were to accept Magda Variel’s words—and there was little reason at the moment not to do so.

In that moment, we emerged from the silent, uneasymaking woods.

“There’s my house,” said Magda.

I confess to being startled by the sight. Not so much by the house itself as by the sweeping expanse of lawn leading up to it. I had never seen such a wide, open lawn extending to a cottage. Not that Magda’s house struck me as being a cottage. It was, in fact, more like a Victorian mansion. Backed up against a tree-thick woods that stretched to the stream (I later learned). The house—I can’t, in conscience, describe it as a cottage—was a mix of brick and timbering, the upper floor supported by iron brackets, the roof made of red tiles, the two brick chimneys tall and ornamental. The front door entrance was obscured by an archway on each side of which were hedges shaped like baby carriages—or “prams,” as I suppose they were called back then. A dirt path led to the archway, a narrow stream of water flowing across it.

“Very nice,” I said. “Did you have it built?”

“No, no.” She smiled in amusement. “It was built in 1857. I purchased it six years ago. That is, my husband purchased it.” She paused. “He died some years ago.” Was that addendum meant for me? Probably not; I let the idea go.

There were dried leaves fastened to the door. “What are they for?” I asked. Naïvely.

“For protection,” she said, opening the door.

I knew immediately—without seeing more than the hint of a smile on her lips—that she was teasing me. “From the fay-eries?” I said, trying (and failing) to sound serious.

She laughed softly. “I thought you’d believe that,” she said.

“Not quite,” I said. “Almost.”

“Come in, my dear,” she told me in a deliberately creaking voice.

Plump and ready for the oven, I thought of replying. I didn’t say it, though. The joke had gone beyond the pale. For me, anyway.

It had for Magda, too. “Oh, do come in, Mr. White,” she said in her normal (warm) voice. “I may end up kissing you discreetly, but I won’t be roasting you for dinner.”

“Glad to hear it,” I replied. I wasn’t really mollified. (Is that the word?) Kissing me discreetly? Was that appropriate flirtation? She was old enough to be my mother. And Mother would never flirt with a teenage boy. Would she?

At any rate, regardless of my frame of mind, I entered the cottage of Magda Variel.

My first reaction was as follows: Jesus, it’s so gloomy! It was. So much so that, initially, I could not see anything. Then my vision focused and I saw—not clearly, but barely—shelves of books, crammed with dark leather volumes, several chairs, a sofa (I’m not sure what they called it back then), and a large round table.

What I did see—very visibly—was a painting, above the mantel of an oversize fireplace. I saw it so visibly because on each side of it was a glass-encased candle, burning and illuminating the painting.

It was the portrait of a young man—about my age, I guessed, delicately handsome—I can’t think of a better way to describe him. It was as though some fastidious Renaissance artist had chosen to describe an angel on Earth—innocent and beautiful. That was Edward. He was attired in (how perfect) Edwardian finery, looking very elegant, indeed. And smiling. A most pleasant smile that—predictably, I later realized—reminded me of Magda’s pleasing smile. I knew, in an instant, who it was—her son who had (as Joe had told me) died in the war.

“You’re looking at Edward,” Magda said, breaking into what had been a noticeable silence on my part.

“Yes,” I said. “He died in the war, didn’t he?” I winced at the temerity of my remark. What if I was wrong?

But I wasn’t. Magda’s questioning took on an edge. “How did you know that?” she asked. Close to demanded.

“Well”—I felt compelled to lie; I don’t know exactly why—“I was in France. And the portrait hanging there is like a…” The word eluded me.

“A shrine?” said Magda. I felt that I had truly offended her. There was only one solution: the truth. I told her that the man who repaired the roof tiles on my cottage said that there “was a woman” who had lost her son in France.

I must have said it convincingly, a gift (or a failing) I have when speaking the truth; Magda relaxed quickly—I could see as she lit an oil lamp on the table. “I’m sorry,” she said, as though she had done something objectionable. “It’s still a painful subject to me. Edward did die in France, in 1917. He was about your age. It came close to breaking my heart.”

“I’m sorry, too,” I said. “I spoke too abruptly. It was rude of me.”

Her hand grasped mine. She was strong, I could tell. Before, her grip had been restrained. Now, it almost hurt.

I must have winced—or made a sound of distress—because, immediately, the grip of her hand relaxed. “I’m sorry, did I hurt you?” she asked in concern.

“You’re strong,” was my deflected answer.

“I was disturbed,” she told me. “It won’t happen again.”

It won’t, because I doubt I’ll be coming here again, came the immediate thought. Too many discomforting distractions (not a bad combination). She was beautiful, all right. That was one of the distractions. Kiss me discreetly? Would discreetly be enough for a healthy (healing wound aside) eighteen-year-old male whose physical experience in France had amounted to nothing other than occasional solo gratifications?

At any rate, with that (unaware of my decision), Magda gave me a conducted tour of the house. I have already indicated what I saw of the main room. In improved lamplight, I saw them all more clearly, notably the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves packed with bound leather volumes; black leather, as I said. Window-covering drapes in scarlet linen, a pair of red-upholstered antique chairs on each side of the fireplace, the sofa (or whatever it was called back then), odd-looking objects (d’art?) across the fireplace mantel. The rest was nothing special to my eye, except, of course, the portrait of Magda’s son, hanging over the fireplace mantel, framed, I could now see, in what appeared to be decorated gold. I had an instant impression (precursor to my Arthur Black conceits) perhaps that Mr. Brean’s vanishing gold had, somehow, been magically whisked to Magda’s house and converted to a picture frame. I dismissed the notion, irritated at myself. Foolish idea.

The tour was conducted on; nothing special. A voluminous kitchen; I’ll describe later. A library. I got the impression that it was, for some reason, off-limits to visitors. A bathroom with the obvious equipment: a commode plus a sink and bathtub, the tub sitting on what appeared to be four pterodactyl claws. The room smelled very sweet; again, for obvious reasons, I assumed. A far cry from the trench smell. You could slice that. A study—more floor-to-ceiling shelves of books, black leather bound, of course, a most roomy desk and antique chair.

“Nothing special,” I said? Until we reached the bedroom, Magda’s bedroom. Dimly lit; she made no move to light the candles—two of them, one hanging overhead, one on a table to the left of the bed.

The bed. That was special, reader. In the faintness of visibility, it looked, to me, like the brothel of a queen—or empress. Though I doubt queens or empresses converted their sleeping quarters into brothels. (I’m not positive.)

How to describe the bed? First of all, it had a canopy of silk plush. Next, the bedcover looked to be the same material, its surface embroidered with arcane symbols I could not make out and was hesitant to ask about. Finally—I mention it last—the bed surface was immense enough to sleep at least three hefty figures, assuming that they ever slept on such evocative acreage.

Let me add that the carpeting in the room—what I could see of it—was nineteenth-century gros point, Magda later told me; I was hardly an expert on English carpeting. In a corner of the room was a red-upholstered chair, next to it, a six-sided table. On which sat a crystal bottle half filled with some dark red liquid, several crystal glasses, and a small pile of books, bound in you know what by now. I must admit that I did not catch sight of all these things at the time. I saw them later.

“So?” said Magda.

“Yes?” was all I could think of in response.

“You like my house?” she asked.

“Yes, I do.” I managed to pretend.

“And this room?” Her tone was definitely suggestive, conclusion jumped.

I swallowed. Tried, anyway. My throat was bone dry. “Exotic,” I answered. It came out as a throat-clogged mutter.

“What did you say?” she asked.

I cleared my throat, trying—hard—to think of a better word. I couldn’t. “Exotic,” I repeated. This time audibly.

“Good,” she said. “That was Edward’s notion.”

Edward’s notion? I didn’t—or didn’t care to—understand.

“He was very artistic.” Magda explained, “He decorated much of the house. Come.” She moved to the bed and sat down, patting the mattress.

Brainless hesitation on my part. I was a standard-model teenage male. I should have jumped (or something) at the chance. I didn’t, though. Did my subconscious (or superconscious) pick up something that alerted me? No idea. But I didn’t move. I couldn’t. For some reason, I didn’t dare. I know it sounds dumb, but it’s true.

“Oh, Alex, please,” she said. She sounded genuinely hurt. “You’re still afraid? I’m old enough to be your mother. I’m not about to ravish you. Or hurt you in any way. I just want you to see how comfortable the mattress is.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. Not sure what I was sorry for.

“Well, never mind.” She stood. “You’ll want to go.”

Oh, God, I thought. I’ve really offended her this time. “I’m sorry,” I said again. Uncertain, it came out flat as a board.

She took my right arm with a gentle grasp. (A workable combination? No.) “I’ll take you to the door.”

By then, I felt really stricken with guilt. She’d been so cordial. Who was I—?

The thought evaporated with her next words; they made me feel even worse. “I was going to offer you some tea and cakes,” she said, “but I know you’d prefer to leave.”

Words tangled in my brain. My apology, Magda, I’ve been thoughtless. Please forgive me. Even worst of all—I’d love to try the mattress! Thank God the jumble of abject apologies stifled that one. I still felt lousy but remained mute (blessedly so) as she led me to the front door and released my arm. “It’s been lovely meeting you,” she said. It sounded less. “Come again when you feel safe about it,” she finished. She kissed me lightly on the cheek. “There—was that discreet enough?” she said. With that, she closed the door on me.

I trudged back to the main path, immersed in gloom. What had I done? I kept remonstrating myself. Stupid idiot. Just because she patted the damn bed? I knew it was more than that but ignored the more. I knew something had prevented me from staying but had no idea what that something was. I felt uncomfortable moving through the silent woods. Go ahead, I thought irrationally. Rustle all you want, who cares?

Reaching the main path, I turned toward my cottage. If my way had been blocked by a quartet of leering wee folk, I’d have angrily booted them in the ass and told them to get lost. Fortunately, nothing blocked my way and I walked, unimpeded, to my cottage.

Chapter Ten

As if my anger and depression were not sufficient, I received an additional jolt upon arriving at the cottage. I was about to open the door when, startling me, it opened by itself, or seemed to. I jumped back with a hollow cry as a figure appeared from the shadowy interior. Before I could stop my heart from pounding, I saw that it was Joe. “Whoa!” he said, surprised to see me. He smiled involuntarily. “It’s you,” he went on. “You startled me.”

I blew out heated breath. What the hell are you doing here? my brain demanded. The roof is done. Looking for more work?

“I brought you some food,” Joe said. “Thought you might be out. Got you bread and cheese, a bottle of milk, some ham.”

It didn’t help my frame of mind to add a measure of guilt to it. The man had done something nice for me, and here I was mentally lambasting him. “Thank you,” I muttered. It came out totally unconvincing.

He changed the subject after saying, “Welcome,” and gestured toward the path. “Been out walking again?” he said. I sensed that he was merely being polite.

I nodded; barely. “Yes.”

“Didn’t go into the woods, I hope,” he said.

“No.” I shook my head, barely. Then—perversity be my name—I decided, on impulse, to tell him all. “I did go into the woods. To Magda Variel’s house.” There, I thought. Make of that what you will.

What he made of it came as a total shock. “Magda Variel’s house,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, mentally daring him to criticize.

“Not a good idea,” he said.

I couldn’t hold in my resentment. “Why?” I believe I ordered.

“Because she’s a witch,” said Joe.

For several moments—an eternity, it seemed—I stood frozen, staring at him. Then blank reaction deepened to fierce rancor, to fury, to absolute wrath. “Oh, that’s too much,” I told him in a clotted voice.

“You don’t believe me,” he observed. It wasn’t difficult to see.

“I do not,” I responded, using, without realizing, one of Father’s oft-repeated phrases.

“You should,” he said.

Ire mounted in me. First, little people in the woods. Now, a witch? What next? A dragon in downtown Gatford?

“Young man, listen to me,” Joe began.

“No,” I interrupted vehemently. “You listen to me.” (Another of the Captain’s incessant phrases.) “I just spent close to an hour in Magda Variel’s house, and a nicer woman I haven’t known since my mother. And she’s old enough to be my mother! She showed me her house and was charming—absolutely charming. She was going to give me tea and cakes, then I said something that hurt her feelings and she sent me home—” I grimaced. “—to my cottage, I mean.”

“Young man,” Joe started again.

I broke in on him once more. “You might be interested to know that she said the same thing about faeries that you did. I’m still not sure about them. But listen, Joe. She’s a lovely woman with a lovely personality. Don’t tell me she’s a witch! That’s ridiculous!”

“All right,” he said in a quiet voice. “Find out for yourself.”

His confidence unhinged me, I admit. “Why do you say this?” I asked.

“Listen,” he said. That it sounded neither angry nor flustered bothered me. I admit again. “She wasn’t always this way. She and her husband and their little boy were much liked in the village. They had people to their house for dinner. They visited other people. She was a substitute teacher at the children’s school.”

He paused. The silence wracked me. It was so silent.

“Then her husband died. An accident. The horse he was riding fell, its neck was broken. Her husband lingered for a week. Then he died.”

Another silence, heavy and discomforting.

“She lived in seclusion [God, he did know words] with her son. Then, on his eighteenth birthday, he enlisted in the army. His mother tried to talk him out of it, but he was adamant. [Another unexpected word from a simple farmer.] He left Gatford, went to France. In a month, he was killed. Mrs. Variel fell apart. She stayed alone in her house. And became a witch.”

Now he lost me again. “Became a witch?” I contested, “How does one become a witch?”

“Maybe she’ll tell you,” he said. Now his voice was edged with resistance. I’d injured Magda’s feelings. Now I’d injured Joe’s. Perfect day. I watched him walk away.

I still didn’t believe it, though. In memory, I retraced each step of my afternoon with Magda from the moment I met her at the path to her house until the moment she’d put me out. Had she said or done anything… well, witchlike? I simply could not visualize her wearing a coned black hat, riding a broom, and conversing with an indigo cat. She was lovely. I was an idiot not to sit on that mattress beside her. Who knows what fervid moments might have ensued? But a witch? It was—to quote myself—ridiculous!

The resentful disbelief of later afternoon led to the bizarre event of the evening. Still feeling cranky and charged with righteous anger, I walked to the Golden Coach, taking into no consideration the fact that I would have to find my way home (Home—ha!) in the dark. I wanted—needed—a drink to wash away my guilt and aggravation. I was mad. And madness in a young man—this one, anyway—can be prodigious. And detrimental.

So there was I, in company with barkeep Tom and several other Gatford worthies, when the trio of louts came in. I call them louts, but that is probably unjust. I would have estimated any three young men as louts because of my stretched-thin temperament that evening. It was, therefore, with the best of intention, I’m sure, that one of the three approached and said (politely—I’m also sure), “We hear that you participated in The Great War.”

I confess that laid me low. “Great—War?” I murmured. Instantly prepared to hurl him through the window. At least.

“My chums and I are planning to enlist,” he told me.

“You are” was all I could say. Great War? Jesus!

“We want to help put the filthy Boche in their place.”

Yes, I thought. The filthy Boche. In their place. I considered tossing my ale in his smiling face. Punching out his sparkling lights (eyes).

But he was so polite, so GD polite. Also, he was twice my size, a bulky, overmuscled farm lad. And he did say “help” put the filthy Boche in their place. At least he wasn’t planning to put them in their place all by himself. Or with his two companions. Generous of them.

So I chose to speak with them. Not kindly or sincerely. Speak, however, when the young “lad” (as Joe would, doubtless, have called him) asked for information re their intention to “confront the bloody Triple Alliance.” Not quite so colorful as “filthy Boche,” but a deal more accurate.

“Let’s see, now,” I began. “First of all, it seems to rain a lot. I’ve heard it said that the explosions do something to the clouds. Maybe, maybe not. It does rain a lot, though. The trenches get muddy. Not so nice. The food is pretty awful, too. Slumgullion is the worst. You’ll find out. And the explosions? Caused by mortar shells or hand grenades. They can do some harm.”

I’d saved the best for next. Should say “for the best,” because the word is replete with sarcasm.

“The mortar shells and hand grenades can do a number of uncomfortable things. Remove an arm or a leg. Blow off your head, in fact. During one attack—which didn’t work—I had to crouch in a shell hole with an officer who’d lost his head. I mean, lost it. All that were left were bloody shreds of his neck. Not too pretty a sight. Shrapnel can also blow out your guts.” I thought of Harold when I said that.

Then I hit them. “Mostly, of course, dead bodies are buried in a spot behind the trench. All the rain uncovers bodies, so they rot. The smell of that—well, lads, I’ll leave that for you to imagine. Not very nice. Can’t say I liked it much. You know who liked it, though? I mean what like it?”

I paused for emphasis.

“The rats,” I told them. “Big ones. Big as cats. Why were they so big? Because they ate the dead soldiers. I mean ate them. Gorged on them. They were especially fond of eyeballs and livers. Smacked their furry little lips as they devoured those goodies.” I may have exaggerated a little there. But I was pissed off at that threesome of rustic dumbbells. And I wanted to sicken them. Maybe I’d talk them out of enlistment. It wasn’t my intention. Still…

“You’ll enjoy shooting the rats; they explode nicely. Just don’t shoot them all—they warn you about attacks the filthy Boche are planning to launch.” I probably didn’t use that last word, memory diffused by eighty-two-year-old cloudiness.

But I went on. Deeply pleased (what a mean compulsion) by their obvious reactions—mouths agape, eyes staring and unblinking, bodies rigid.

“When I say ‘warn,’ I don’t mean the rats can talk,” I continued. “I mean they run away before the attacks begin. Little bastards must be psychic. You can have fun with them, however. Rat war. Throw the dead bodies at each other, watch them splat against faces if your aim is good.”

Another pause for dramatic emphasis. There definitely was a hint of Arthur Black–to-come in me.

“I don’t mean to tell you that the only unpleasant smell was that of rotting corpses. Not at all. There was also the odor of the cesspools—or as we called them, the shit pits. That’s rather unpleasant, too. Not to mention the lingering odor of poison gases—rotting sandbags—cigar and cigarette smoke—cooking food. All combined into one ghastly perfume of war.” I did say that; not bad for eighteen.

“Is that it? Not exactly.” I went on, “Mustn’t forget the lice. They lay eggs in the seams of your uniforms. Nasty buggers. Cause trench fever. Severe pain and fatal fever. Then, of course, the muddy trenches and the cold cause trench foot. Feet get blue and swollen, have to be amputated sometimes. Anything else? No, that’s all, lads. Best of luck. Slugs and Frogs, you can worry about on your own.”

I never found out whether they had enlisted or not. I only knew that I felt justified in my rant. Not that I felt any better about Magda—even Joe. But a percentage of the steam had been released.

Is that enough description of trench warfare? I told you I’d get around to it. Satisfied?

Chapter Eleven

It rained for three days straight afterwards. Straight? It never rained straight, either vertical or horizontal. It always seemed to fall at an angle, mostly right. And hard. Damned hard. I couldn’t sleep upstairs in the cottage because of the pounding on the roof tiles. I tried to sleep there, then after one restless night, tossed my straw-filled mattress (damp, of course) down to the first floor. The pounding on the roof was slightly more endurable there—especially with half a torn handkerchief stuffed into each ear.

Trouble was, with that arrangement, I thought I heard a distant party taking place, voices, laughter, banging noises, faint music. After a second night of that, I slept, exhausted, through the party. Enjoy yourself, I’m sleeping, I informed the far-off celebrants, whoever—or whatever—they were. It never crossed my mind that it was fay-eries. I’m not sure I believe it was. It was probably me.

At any rate, three days of constant rain. In the sky and in my brain. I was depressed. I attempted to convince myself that it was the dismal weather and the emotional hangover from my harsh rant to the three farmer boys. That failed to wash, however. I knew exactly what it was. Joe’s probably improvident warning added to my already strong-enough guilt regarding my behavior to Magda. How had I offended her? By simply hesitating to share that mattress with her? Was it that bad a gaffe? Well, it was. Otherwise, why would she have changed her tune so abruptly? Rats! I finally concluded. You did her wrong, however unintentionally. Was all lost? Likely. Her offense meter was too easily activated.

My excessive guilt resulted in a vision. Or, more conceivably, a hallucination. I knew a soldier who had experienced one, catching clear sight of his mother. So clear that he clambered out of the trench to embrace her, telling us, with a happy laugh, what he was about to do. Only to embrace a sniper’s bullet in his brain, poor foolish kid. (He was seventeen, had lied about his age in order to enlist in the service.) Could it have been Edward? I wondered. Had he seen Magda out in No Man’s Land, smiling, arms extended?

Because that was what I saw one night, waking from a heavy sleep. Standing downstairs in No Man’s Land (the cottage), smiling at me, arms extended, gesturing for me to go to her. I suppose I might have been chilled by the sight. I wasn’t. Even when she simply wasn’t there and I realized that she had, doubtless, been hallucinated. I felt warmed by the remembrance. She hadn’t really appeared to me, of course. I was certain of that. Nonetheless, the vision comforted me and made me vow to visit her again.

Three more days, now of sunshine, drying up the countryside. I decided that the time had come. I donned as passable an outfit as I could manage in the still-humid air of the cottage and started up the path once more. Anticipating, with intense pleasure, the prospect of seeing that lovely woman again.

By the time I’d reached the foot of the path to Magda’s house, my pleasure had degenerated to a state of intense disgust with myself. I’d let an obvious hallucination urge me to this foolish plan? Disgusting. Absolutely so. Naïve and disgusting. Almost as naïve and disgusting as letting Joe’s words affect me. A witch? An ancient crone, bad teeth and all, incessant cackling and cat conversing, wearing dark cerements, coned cap, and perched on a flying broom, eating little children? Sure. Made a lot of sense.

A lot of non-sense. She was a sensitive woman who had no desire whatever to see me again. Why would I even permit myself to consider such a stupid action? I’d insulted her. She did not care to let me in her house. I was a numskull for thinking it.

So what did I elect to do? My only excuse is this: I was eighteen. What more could be expected from my limited awareness? Nothing intelligent. Far from it. Irritated at myself, lamebrained to a fault, I decided to confront the faeries and spit in their wee folk eyes, defy their damned Middle Kingdom. Remember this—I really didn’t buy any of it. Joe’s words? Foolish. Magda’s words? Sincere but illogical. Oh, listen, folks. I knew I was being stupid, but I chose, with true teenage stubbornness, to ignore my calculated stupidity and “press on,” as the Brits like to say. So I did.

Almost to my end.

As I entered the woods, it was with a combination of bravado and trepidation. Over and over, I repeated my subconscious mantra: It’s nonsense, all nonsense. Although, down in the cellar of my brain, that little chump of an unsophisticate pestered me, or always, with the invariable query: How do you know? I didn’t. That was the trouble. So when there seemed to be an odd trembling of the tree leaves, I reacted with instant trembling myself. Oh, stop it! I fought back. It’s a damn breeze in a damn tree!

Explaining a bending of grass blades directly in front of me? Yes! I insisted mulishly. Natural explanation; nothing more. I walked on, trying to ignore the sudden chill I felt. Was that goose flesh rising on my arms? No! Well, yes. It was getting a little chilly. May. Northern England. Spring climate unpredictable. Yes. Good. Everything explained. A desire to laugh at all the silliness of superstition. I giggled, picking at an insect crawling on my hair. Which wasn’t there. Then a second bug. Not there. Simple nervousness, I told myself. The body obviously connected to the—what, the skull? Well, to the nervous system. Right you are. What time was it? I should buy a watch. I might have been inside here for hours. Was I?

There was a sudden flash of movement to my right. I looked so quickly in that direction that I felt a painful crackling in my neck. Nothing there. A faerie running? Don’t be stupid. A squirrel, maybe. A rabbit. Calm down, White.

A flickering of light around me. Real? Or nervousness again? Couldn’t be hallucination, could it? Why not? I shivered. Someone was watching me. The woods were watching me. No, Alex, don’t be ridiculous. Woods do not have eyes. Calm down.

Then I thought I heard those party celebrants in the distance. Same sounds. Talking, singing, banging noises. Now that was disturbing. No, God damn it! I heard nothing but the inflaming of my brain. Don’t let it bother you, White old White!

Ah. Another person. An old woman carrying a basket, a dark shawl over her shoulders. “Hello!” I called, “Do you—?”

The words congealed in my mouth. The old lady was gone. I don’t mean stepped behind a tree or anything. I mean gone. Vanished.

Time to leave, I “calmly” instructed myself. I started to turn. But couldn’t. My legs were glue. I couldn’t move. Overhead, the foliage of the trees began to shake. Violently. And there was no wind. None at all. The tree leaves, twigs, even the branches were whipping loudly in the non-wind.

Which is when, giving up to dread, I sobbed. Aloud.

Then cried out, shocked and terrified, as a powerful hand grasped my left arm and jerked me around.

Magda.

“Come,” was all she said.

And, abruptly, she had turned me and was running me back through the woods, her hand so tight on my arm that it pained. While she ran, wordless, she took something from her coat pocket and, reaching around me, dropped it into the right-hand pocket of my jacket; I had no idea what it was. “What is that?” I asked. Breathless by now.

“Keep running,” was all she said.

I felt a mixture of relief and gratitude suffusing me. I was with her again, and she was saving me. From what? I no longer doubted, my mantra shattered. Whatever it was, there was definitely something in the woods. Something dangerous. And Magda was rescuing me from it, bless her. A witch? She could be Satan’s sister, for all I cared.

Now she was doing something else as we ran. And ran and ran and ran—the damned wee folk seemed to have lured me a football-field distance from the path. To my perplexed surprise, I saw that with each long stride, she was throwing white flowers to each side of our rush. I didn’t ask her why she was doing it. I was sure she had a reason.

Now I was beginning to notice (I’d have had to be deaf not to notice it) an increasingly thunderous noise like that of a herd of stampeding elephants crashing through a bamboo forest. I had an urge to look back and see what it was, but common sense dissuaded me. She wouldn’t want me to, I thought. That alone was enough to dissuade me. So, horrified, gasping for breath, a terrible aching in my hip and a stabbing pain in my side (I didn’t know about stitches in those days), I sprinted on, partly of my own volition, largely by the powerful yanking of my racing savior.

When we finally reached the path, I collapsed, both legs devoid of strength. Magda made a soft sound of alarm, trying to prevent my fall. No use. I dropped to one knee, then the next, and in a moment, I was sitting on the ground, palms down in an attempt to keep from totally sprawling. I looked up, blinking dizzily. “Whoa,” I muttered.

“You feel strange,” she said, she didn’t ask.

“Very strange.” I nodded, sure that my head would topple off if I nodded too energetically. “Never felt like this before.”

“I know,” she said. How do you know? I wondered.

I tried to stand but couldn’t. I remained recumbent. “What happened?” I asked, looking for a simple answer to drive away the darkness of my senses.

I didn’t get it. “You did a foolish thing,” she told me.

There it was. Introductory verification of what I didn’t want to accept. “Oh?” I murmured, sounding utterly stupid.

“You know what you did,” she said. “Did you think you could defy them?”

Them, I thought. The very word made me shudder. I drew in a shaking breath. “They’re really there, then,” I acknowledged, changing my life—not knowing it.

“Of course they are,” said Magda. “Didn’t that man—the one who repaired your roof—warn you?”

I had to admit it. “Yes.”

“But you ignored him. Why?” she said.

I couldn’t tell her. Well, you see, he said that you’re a witch, and that made me angry. Right. Perfect answer. If she demanded further explanation, I’d tell her that I was so upset by what I’d told the three farmer boys that I wasn’t thinking straight. Not that much of an excuse either, but better than the witch revelation.

So all I said was, “I don’t know. I just wasn’t thinking.”

She was so quiet that I felt the need to speak. “I saw an old woman,” I told her.

“She wasn’t real,” Magda replied. “She was one of their tricks, I warned you about that.” (Had she? I couldn’t remember.) Her tone was parental and, in spite of everything, old bells were jangled and I could sense myself bristling. She could see it, too.

She gazed down at me in further silence, and I felt a dreadful sense of guilt. I didn’t speak, however. No reasonable comment had occurred to me. Don’t look at me like that, I thought. I felt certain that she knew I was lying about why I went into the woods. Or, at least, withholding the truth.

At last (it seemed such a long time) she asked, “Do you think you can make the house?”

Make the house? I must still have been semi-groggy from the frightening incident because the phrase made no sense to me. I stared at her. Then made another blundering remark as her question suddenly made sense to me. Well, almost. “I’m not sure,” I said. “It’s pretty far away.”

“No, it’s not,” she countered. “You can make it.” Make it? Reach it! Yes, of course. But it is far away, I thought.

“Come along,” she said gently. “It’s only up the path.”

Which is when I realized that the house she was referring to was hers. A burst of further gratitude laved through my bones. She was not expecting me to “make it” to my cottage. Generously, she was inviting me back to her house. God bless us, every one! As Tiny Tim exulted. Or said, anyway.

Chapter Twelve

By then, the wave of dizziness had subsided, and I decided I could stand. Magda helped me to my feet. As I put weight down on my right leg, I hissed with pain. “What is it, dear?” she asked. The anxiety in her voice was music to my ears.

“My war wound,” I told her, trying to sound comically melodramatic and failing completely.

“What happened?” she asked worriedly. I told her about the grenade explosion in the trench, not mentioning the even more horrendous wound incurred by Harold Lightfoot. I let her believe my wound was solo, relishing the look of sympathetic concern it brought to her face. “You poor darling, it must have been terribly painful. I wish I could carry you to the house.”

She held my left arm again and placed her right arm around my waist as we headed for the path to her house. I confess (to my shame) that I probably limped more exaggeratedly than needed. But I was eighteen, folks. I’d just been through a ghastly experience. And my companion was a beautiful scarlet-haired woman who was redolent with sympathy. So I milked it, kid that I was.

“What really made you enter the woods?” she asked. Was she already suspicious of my initial explanation?

I gave her answer number two—the Farmer Boy Triplet account. All right, they weren’t triplets. I said they were, immediately dreading the possibility that she’d find out it was a pathetic fib. But I went on, once more, milking the moment. Not that it needed that much lactose-evoking. My account to the three had been accurate. Cruelly stated but accurate. Magda’s reaction was strong. “Oh, no more,” she said, pleading. I realized, as she spoke, that my words had probably brought to the surface traumatic memories of her son and what he may have suffered in the trenches.

To change the subject, I reached into the right-hand pocket of my jacket—my hand rubbing hers as I did—and felt around. My fingers touched the object, soft and seemed to be round. I drew it out and looked at it. A flower, white. “What’s this?” I asked. It was mere curiosity.

Magda stopped so abruptly, it almost made me stumble. The expression on her face was indecipherable. (Good word, that.) Had I gone amiss again, said something that I shouldn’t have? How was that possible?

“I found it in my pocket,” I thought I explained. “You put it there when we were running.” That didn’t explain my question, but it was the best I could do.

“And why do you think I did that?” she asked. Now I guessed at her reaction. She assumed that I was, somehow, mocking her. Mocking? No way. She’d saved me, probably my life, why would I dream of—? No, impossible.

“Well,” I answered, sensing what she wanted me to say. “Some kind of protection.”

That loosened her expression. “Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly right.” I felt such relief that I scarcely heard the words of what else she said. Something about primrose—what the flower was. Something about faeries (that damned word again) being so fond of primrose that she thought it might delay their pursuit. Which, apparently, it had. “That’s all it takes?” I remember asking. Subconsciously, I already accepted the explanation. She saved me from… what? I didn’t dare to consider the possibilities.

“There are various plants and flowers that they’re very fond of and drawn to,” Magda told me as we continued toward her house, me limping quite a bit, not to exaggerate my condition but because it hurt like hell. Magda broke into her explanation to commiserate. “Poor dear,” she murmured. “It’s your wound, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said.

I felt another surge of warm relief as Magda kissed me on the cheek and said, “We’ll fix you up when we reach the house.” I almost wished the lawn was wider, I felt so comforted by her arm around my waist, her warm hand on my arm, her very presence. “What other plants and flowers?” I asked, wanting the moments to last.

“Mistletoe, foxglove, and poinsettia are popular among the faeries,” she went on. I had to chuckle at the word “mistletoe.” Magda looked at me suspiciously until I explained about Christmas kisses. She smiled and continued to enumerate various trees also “popular” among Middle Kingdom citizens—birch, willow, oak, and rowan being most “popular.”

She was starting to tell me what shiny stones the faeries favored (another passable combo), their most “sacred” stone, the green emerald. “Naturally, I wouldn’t dispose of them to slow down pursuit,” she said, a smile of suppressed amusement on her lips—which I, suddenly (why had it taken that long?), noticed how full—and kissable—they looked, although I doubt the notion of kissing Magda actually occurred to me at that instant, just the general (I think) observation.

At any rate—I’ve asided enough; we reached the house and Magda helped me in. Before we entered, though, I asked, “What about the water? Also protection?” Now I was fully aware of catering to her. I wondered if she knew it (probably), but she only smiled. “That’s right,” she said.

“And the dry leaves on the door?” I asked.

“Now you’re overdoing it,” she told me.

I winced. She knew, of course. “I’m sorry,” I said. I really was.

She closed the door, and for a moment, the gloom of the interior gave me a sense of uneasiness. I had to—quickly—remind myself that Magda had just—I might as well admit it—saved me “at the crunch,” as Mr. Churchill would have put it.

My vision focused then, and I made out the familiar room, most notably the candlelit portrait of Edward smiling serenely above the fireplace mantel.

My leg and hip were really bothering me now, and Magda, without another word, helped me across the room, past the ceiling-high bookcases. Not into the bedroom, I thought. I simply wasn’t ready for that, although, it seemed that she might do that, having me lie on her bed to rest.

Instead, she aided me into the kitchen.

I was charmed—but not surprised—by the appearance of the room. It was as warm in invitation as Magda was, mostly light-textured wood paneling and a ceiling painted pale yellow. Against the wall, farthest from me, was the cast-iron stove, dark utensils hanging from overhead bars, three on the left, two on the right. The stove itself, recessed in a black brick wall (black, I assumed, from the heat and flames of the fire underneath). At the moment, only a footing of red coals glowed across the bottom. On the left side of the stove was an oven door, a black cloth hanging from its handle—or its knob, I couldn’t tell which.

In the center of the room was what looked like—and was—a heavy oak table, one (oak) chair pushed under it, a large candlelit lantern hanging above it, so close to the ceiling that the candle smoke had left a black patch on the ceiling.

Magda led me to a voluminous oak armchair standing to the right of the stove. Magda told me later that it was an antique, deliberately voluminous to accommodate hoopskirts. She helped me to sit down. As I did, the pain in my hip and leg flared sharply, and I uttered a soft involuntary groan. “Oh, darling,” Magda said, obviously concerned.

“I’ll be all right,” I said. Already the pain was lessening.

“You’re very brave,” she told me. “I hope Edward was able to control pain as you are.”

What if he was killed in a moment? The cruel thought jumped into my brain. Thank God I didn’t voice it. All I managed to say was, “I’m sure he was.”

She stood gazing at me for what seemed to be a long time, her expression, again, indecipherable. (I do like that word.) “You look like him,” she said. Then, turning so quickly that her long skirt rustled, she moved to a small wall-hung cabinet and opened it, removing several earthenware containers, two cups and saucers, and a covered cracker box. She looked, at that moment, so domestic, reminding me of my too-soon-lost mother that I had to know—I had to. “Mrs. Variel,” I began.

“Magda, please,” she corrected me pleasantly, now checking an oversize pot on the stove, satisfied, at the pot’s water level.

I braced myself; you might say I girded my mental loins.

“Yes?” she said, turning from the stove.

I drew in a fitful breath.

“What is it, Alex?” she asked. I’d have preferred that she called me “dear” or “darling”—but there was no time for such an irrelevant disappointment.

“Magda,” I said.

“Yes, dear, what is it?”

I had to ask, as awkward as it was. “My roofer,” I said.

“Joe, yes, I remember,” she replied.

She waited then. Oh, god, I wish I’d never started this! my brain lamented.

“What is it, darling?” Magda said. She’d called me “darling” now. That only made it worse.

Tongue-tied is a legitimate description. My tongue was double knotted. I could only stare at her.

“What about Joe?” she asked. So God damn understandingly that I would have welcomed a giant crack in the kitchen floor, swallowing me whole.

“Alex, what?” she asked. She sounded worried now.

The words came tumbling out. “He said you were a witch.”

Magda stood before my chair and gazed at me with what I can only describe as a fixed expression. Anger? Disappointment? I wasn’t sure. Finally, she spoke. “Would you say that again?” she asked. Or was she asking? Maybe she wanted to hear me speak the words again. But why? If she was a witch, was she going to zap me (1982 slang) with a bolt of lightning?

I knew I had to repeat what I’d said. I did so, but so softly, I could tell she couldn’t hear my voice. I tensed myself. The action made my hip-leg pain amplify again, making me wince. I hoped she wouldn’t think I was sympathy seeking (another possible phrase: A.B. circa 1982) as I repeated the words again, slowly and distinctly. No point in trying to obscure them. They were what they were. “He said you were a witch.”

More fixed gazing. Then Magda turned and moved to another armless oak chair to the left of the fireplace. The grating noise the chair feet made as she drew it over to mine made me wince again. (I was definitely wince prone that afternoon.)

Placing the chair across from me, she seated herself. She even sits gracefully, it came to me—true but not exactly the point.

“Alex,” she began.

Oh, Christ, don’t lecture me! My brain rebelled instantly. Captain Bradford Smith White, USN, commenced too many lectures with my name, in that exact tone.

“What?” I heard myself reply, responding not to her but to my father.

“Let’s not be truculent,” she said.

At least the Captain had never used that word. I doubt he knew it.

I controlled my unthinking reaction, reminding myself that she had, in all probability, saved my life. “Sorry,” I muttered. I was but didn’t sound it.

“That’s all right,” she said. “I suppose I am what your roofer said, at least as he interprets it. To him, I’m a witch. That’s true. I am.”

I shivered so violently in my voluminous chair (my shiver more voluminous by far) that it creaked beneath me.

Magda was amused by my reaction. “Alex, Alex,” she said, “what on earth do you think a witch is? And I must tell you, I dislike the word, it rouses such grotesque images. Isn’t that what’s been making your behavior so guarded since your roofer told you what he did?”

I had to admit the truth of that. Crones with cone-shaped hats addressing black cats? Her words rang true. But not enough.

“You aren’t sure yet, are you?” Magda said, “You still believe I’m something to be frightened of. As you’re now, I’m glad, frightened by the little people. They are something to be frightened by. I’m not. Can’t you see that?”

Her words—and voice—were so persuasive that I almost lost my apprehension about her. Not quite, though. There was still a lot about her I had no comprehension of. (Apprehension, comprehension. If Black had written poetry, he might have rhymed those two.)

“Let me tell you what a witch—as you refer to it—really is,” Magda said.

She went on to explain that so-called witchcraft was a religion—“and it is a religion,” she emphasized—called Wicca, a feminine form of the Old English word wicce, meaning “witch.” A sizable cult, its membership was extensive. (Although, as far as she knew, she was the only one in Gatford.) In common with more orthodox religions, Wicca has worship as its main goal. The cult is primarily matriarchal, its high priestess “not me, a far greater person,” Magda emphasized, though not identifying her. “She’s respected as the Queen of Heaven, her symbols the moon and stars.”

Wicca recognized responsibility toward nature and sought to live in harmony with the environment. They did not accept the concept of supernatural, believing that true power was naturally available. They recognized both outer and inner worlds and interaction between them. There was more, which I fail to recall. Wicca was (is?) basically a fertility cult, its festivals geared to the seasons.

“Most memberships meet at certain dates,” Magda told me. “The spring equinox, the summer solstice, the autumn equinox. I attend them when I can. Mostly, I worship alone. I tried to start a coven once [a “working unit,” she later explained], but it didn’t work—the others were dismayed by my proximity to the Middle Kingdom. They thought it was damaging to the religion.”

“And is it?” I asked, trying to involve myself in the moment.

Magda smiled. “I don’t think so. But I’m what you’d call a dilettante wicce. I go my own way.”

I started to cough, clearing my throat. “And magic?” I asked.

She looked at me, a curious expression on her face. “Magic?” she said. “Why do you ask that?”

Already I felt awkward and embarrassed. Why had I asked such a question? Was I psychic? Or just stupid? No way of knowing. Then.

“Well,” I said, voice trembling. “I just assumed—”

“That witches performed magic?” she asked, but said, “I don’t. Hardly ever. On occasion, I perform a ritual during which what you assume to be magic occurs. But nothing more. Any other questions?”

I knew she was becoming impatient with me, but there was another question preying at my mind (my brain). “Why did you become a witch?” I asked, adding quickly, “I mean a wicce.” I hoped I pronounced it right.

She gazed at me silently, and I wondered if she was going to answer. Or had I asked another offending question?

“I was a Lutheran,” she said. “Most Scandinavians are.” Scandinavian? I thought. She didn’t look it. “My parents half were, my mother English,” she explained. “They came to Northern England when I was three—I never knew why. Faithfully, I went to church with my husband and Edward. Then my husband was killed and then Edward was killed. I was completely devastated. The religion didn’t comfort me. I left the church and lived awhile without religion. During that time, I turned to nature for comfort. And when I accepted that Wicca was a nature-oriented faith, I turned to it—four years ago. Now are you appeased? Or am I still a menacing creature in your eyes?”

I was bereft of words. I felt only shame that I’d doubted what was so clearly the kindness of her nature. All I could murmur, humbly, was, “Forgive me.”

“Oh, my dear.” All impatience vanished from her voice and posture. How it happened, I do not recall, but suddenly she was on her knees in front of me, arms around my body, clasping tightly. “Thank you, darling. Thank you,” she whispered.

I guess that was the moment I fell in love with Magda Variel, my beautiful red-haired witch.

Mistake.

Chapter Thirteen

Let me alter this to chapter fourteen. Thirteen being a proven problem (I like that combination) of a number. Look it up yourself; it won’t be difficult. For instance—in tall buildings, there are no thirteenth floors.

So I do the same for my written building—not, too bad, my written skyscraper. There will be no thirteenth story.

Chapter Fourteen

I moved in with Magda soon after our flight from the faeries. No lovemaking involved. That surprised (frankly, disappointed) me. But I could not romantically approach my new mother. It seemed as though she had assumed that role.

I had to hold on to Comfort Cottage (what a joke) for three months. I’d paid that much in advance, and my landlord balked at returning money. So I had a rented residence in addition to my residence with Magda. An entrepreneur at eighteen. Not bad.

The first accommodation Magda provided was to perform a ritual titled Drawing Down the Moon.

I wasn’t sure why she did this. To reassure me how benign Wicca was? To give me a demonstration of genuine Wicca magic? To acclimate me to her way of life?

No. She had something far more memorable to “exemplify”—as they say in Northern England. An easier word? Something far more “remarkable,” then. To demonstrate—to prove.

It took place on a night when the moon was full. Build-up of power, Magda explained, was more achievable when all participants are unclothed. Since we were so newly acquainted, however, she would forgo this element of the ritual. She would, rather, attempt to “charge the atmosphere” by garbing herself in a thin silk robe, electing modesty for “dynamism.” She also chose to dance alone, since being a novice, I would, doubtless, foul up the procedure. She didn’t say “foul up,” of course; she suggested only “possible mitigation” of the ritual. No help for it, however. I remember disappointment on my part. Even beneath her usual impervious outfits (not, I swear, that I made any attempt to perviate them—is there such a word? I doubt it), I could tell that her figure was sumptuous. No other word is accurate.

The ritual began. Low illumination—several candles only. Incense and burning herbs suffusing the air with an exotic, fragrant haze. Fireplace warmth heating the room to tropical sultriness.

Magda twisting and turning in a ritual dance. I tried, very determinedly, not to look at her body. My mind succeeded generally. My eyes and groin had less success. Her figure was (by gods in Heaven or Hell) totally sumptuous, her breasts (I confess I absolutely gaped at them) close to immense. Her stomach ovoid and milk white. Except for the ebony triangle between her long, moving legs, which, I swear to you, I did not attempt (other than sporadically) to look at.

Did I mention (no, I didn’t) that throughout her dance, the succulent Magda (she actually seemed to become more beautiful with every second) chanted softly. The melody was catchy, but the lyrics, if I may call them that, were in Latin—I believe they were in Latin. I got totally caught up by, lost in increasing entrancement. Maybe it was the dim, flickering light, perhaps the sinuous sweep (good combo) of her body, the lung-filling intoxication of the combined incense.

Whatever it was, the miracle began.

I’m sure you’re all familiar with the word “electrify.” Of course you are. In this day and age, it has no more significance than the flicking up of a wall switch to turn on bulbs.

In 1918, things were different. Electricity meant less than gas stoves to an Eskimo. I knew it existed; Tom Swift and His Electric Dog. (Just made that up.) I’d read about electric lights on the Titanic. I knew what electric power was supposed to be, but it had never affected me personally; that’s the point I’m trying to make. And even on that evening, I was not aware of what was taking place. Even now, I’m not quite sure. I know only that it had to be electric. Had to be.

Initially, a tingling. I can come up with no more accurate description. Have you experienced acupuncture? If so, you know how thin wires are often attached to the needles, then fastened to some electric source—my guess, a battery of some sort. The feeling—I had it in my leg and hip—was a small intermittent electric shock—or tingling, to return to that more authentic word. It was not what one would term exactly pleasant. Neither was it painful. Especially since it was all located in the area of my shrapnel wound. I sensed—I know—it was deliberate. Clearly, Magda’s ritual was a healing one.

Did I tell you?—probably not, it’s been a long time since I’ve written a coherent book—MIDNIGHT EROS, if I recall correctly. Anyway, in case I haven’t mentioned it—Magda bathed for a full hour before the ritual began. The candles she lit were thick and purple—five of them. She wore a heavy scarlet robe before she doffed it, revealing the near-transparent gown. Her hair was tightly bound around her head. There was no makeup on her face, not even lip rouge. Purity? I couldn’t tell you, but it seems a logical explanation.

Back to the miracle. Next, my leg and hip were seized by numbness. Then, within this numb sensation, I felt what seemed to be tiny fingers manipulating nerves and tendons, altering an artery, pressing bone in place. Because of the numbness, I felt no pain. It was, instead, a weird experience, I tell you, unlike, to the slightest degree, anything I’d ever known before. It lasted, I would estimate, less than five minutes. During that time, Magda stood motionless, arms extended toward me, pointing a hazel wand at me. I knew what was happening but had no conception of how it was happening.

Then a return of sensation in my hip and leg, a minute or so of new pain (slight). Was it cosmic recuperation? Once more, look not to me for clarification. I have none. All I remember is that brief period of new pain ending and the incredible realization that my shrapnel wound no longer plagued me. On the contrary, I felt no indication of the wound whatever—later, when I looked at my hip and leg, although there were faintly visible scars, there was no other evidence that my flesh had been torn apart by the grenade burst.

How do I describe the emotion I felt toward Magda? Looking at her through a veil of tears, I watched as she extinguished the incense and purple candles, the herbs. She redonned her scarlet robe. I do not recall so much as a physical tremor as, in pulling on the robe, she momentarily revealed the voluptuousness of her body. I was beyond mere sensation, suffused, instead, with such loving gratitude that I began to cry. Helplessly, joyfully. “Thank you,” I managed to say before my voice was lost beneath a torrent of sobs.

“Oh, my dear,” she murmured, coming over to where I was sitting. I did my best to stand and meet her, but my legs were simply not up to it. Not because of pain but because impassioned gratitude had taken all the starch out of every part of me except—I can use only the one word—my heart.

Magda caught me falling and held me up. I wrapped both arms around her, clutching at her soft warmth. “Thank you, thank you,” I was able to repeat before uncontrollable weeping beset me again.

“My darling, I’m so glad,” she murmured, kissing my cheeks and, once, my lips. I made nothing of that, so emotionally bound that only grateful love was in charge.

Then she laughed. She actually laughed. “Is that enough magic for you?” she asked.

I laughed, too, through the tears.

Life with Magda continued harmoniously after my healing. I transferred my belongings from the Nazi bunker (I’ve explained that) and moved them to her house. We became good friends, prior to somewhat other.

I remember one of the early evenings after I became her houseguest. (I didn’t know, then, that in her eyes I was considerably more.) We were having dinner in her kitchen. She had made—she was a superlative cook—a delicious stew, chunks of tender beef, gravy immersed with vegetables including carrots, onions, zucchini, turnips, and the like. Small red potatoes also. She had a garden behind the house where grew (most successfully) all these items. If there were any bugs or other vermin to be dealt with, she was not required to deal with them. Some kind of protective “armor” to prevent such incursion? I never knew, but I suspected. Wicca had to be valuable for something in excess of religion. (An unkind remark. Scratch it.)

At any rate, dinner in her kitchen. And pleasant conversation. At one point of which I made the innocent suggestion that perhaps my healing was, at least partially, due to me, my mind in a state of hypnosis. I didn’t even know the word I used in place of it. I knew nada about Freud’s activities.

Anyway, however I expressed it, Magda didn’t care for it at all. At first, her features hardened, chilling me. Then her customary expression of kind affection returned, and she said, patient as always, “No, Alex, that’s not true. It had nothing to do with you. The ritual summoned outside forces. Without that summons being responded to, nothing would or could have taken place.”

Immediately, I expressed apology. Whatever had taken place—and I accepted every word of her explanation—to me, it was a total miracle. I mentioned the long walk along the path we’d taken that afternoon. There hadn’t been so much as a hint of pain in my hip and leg. “Forgive me, please forgive me. I wasn’t trying to take credit for my healing. I was talking out of turn,” is what I said.

Magda reached across the table and took my hand in hers. She understood completely. All she meant to convey to me was the truth that, as humans, we had no individual control of our welfare. If we needed help, it was available—from external powers. Wicca knew this, respected it, and utilized it as needed. “Remember that, Alex,” she said. “Keep it in your mind always.”

“I will,” I promised. I had no idea how wrong she was. Well, not exactly wrong. Say, rather, limited. But I was not to learn that for some time.

We became lovers soon after. If I do not exceed myself, to describe my teenage bedroom abilities (crude at best) as worthy of the word “lover.” Magda, yes. She excelled at every aspect of the word. How she endured my clumsy—but honest, I protest—approach to lovemaking, I have no idea. She never found fault with it, God bless her. There was little but love in her lovemaking. Whatever negative responses she must have had (remember, I am eighty-two now and see with clearer, at least mental, eyes), she never voiced discouragement in my undeveloped (though, understandably youthful) crudity at bedroom tactics.

It began like this. I had just bathed and was headed for my (Edward’s) bedroom, when Magda came out of her library. Her smile of greeting was, as always, warmly welcoming, as though she hadn’t seen me for a day or so. “Are you all clean now?” she asked.

“As much as possible,” I said, returning her smile.

“Good,” she said. She moved toward me.

Now, I will admit that, more than once, I had admired (a polite word for “stared at”) her figure. Numerous times when she leaned over (a table, a chair, me) I’d regarded her outstanding cleavage with more than casual appraisal. Once, my groin had reacted so equally outstandingly that I had to try hiding the obvious protuberance, although I knew full well that she noticed it.

I remember thinking that the room—the main one—had suddenly grown overheated, affecting, mostly, my cheeks. I also remember trying to initiate some pointless conversation regarding turnips—or potatoes—or some equally absurd growth, which she kindly responded to, although I know she understood what I was seeking to obscure—the obviously thrusting bulge in my trousers.

On this occasion, unlike others of similar proximity, she didn’t stop but kept approaching until she’d reached me and pressed herself against me. I started as she drew the towel from my body and dropped it on the floor. “I think we’ve waited long enough,” she murmured. What had it been, a week, two weeks? It no longer mattered. Her lips were engaged with mine, so soft and warm, they turned my flesh to fire. I gained in rigid size with amazing (I thought) speed. I felt her warm, strong fingers wrap around it, tightly. I couldn’t help it. I groaned with excited desire, reached up both hands, and grasped her breasts. Had they also swelled in size? I had no idea, but the fantasy I’d yielded to for some time now came true. Amazingly, her lips continuing to caress mine, somehow she’d opened up her dress and both her breasts were in my hands, their nipples as large as I’d imagined them to be, as rigid as me.

How much further can I go on? Despite my elderly, less than working-order condition, the recounting of that afternoon’s enterprise, shall I call it, has even stirred a far-off echo in my trousers that, testosterone deprived, I am hard-put (wrong words) hesitant to acknowledge much less conform to; God forbid, the consequences doubtless would be inconsequential if not humiliating.

At any rate, she finished kissing me and led me to her bedroom (that incredible bedroom) by hand, now gripping mine and not my nether region—which, unaided by her, did not abate rigidity for a second. What am I saying? Of course it was aided by her, by her very presence, which became entirely present by the second as she removed all her clothing. By the illumination of the one candle she wick-flamed into light, I saw, not through the veiling of the gown she’d worn during the healing ritual, her beautiful body. Which she used to draw me down onto her amazing bed and in several moments, guided my member deep inside her body. Into which, in a very brief time—seconds, I expect—I cannon-shot the full volume of my boyhood juices. I hoped—in vain, it turned out—that Magda experienced some measure of the vivid ecstasy I’d felt. Not so, I soon discovered. Still, after I’d achieved my virtually instantaneous gratification, she smiled and kissed me tenderly. “I’m glad we did it,” she whispered in my ear. “We’ll do it again.”

And do it again we did—repeatedly, night and day. On her bed, then, later, on the main room sofa (or whatever it was called), even in the kitchen, me spread open on the voluminous chair, Magda straddling me, her lovely face contorted by what I must call lust, her breasts in my face. “My darling,” she repeated again and again, pulling back my head to kiss me with passionate ardor. What teenage boy ever had it so good? I thought. I didn’t know.

The number of times we made love seems countless. Magda seemed insatiable. If that’s what Wicca did, I decided at first, bully and good show!—as the Brits say. Sex became a habit. In Magda’s case, I would say, rather, an addiction. As insane as it sounds, after a while I became worn out and even inured it. At eighteen? I seemed to be taking on the demeanor of the old coot I’ve become. Why I didn’t know—when I considered the problem at all, which wasn’t much. I know now. Or at least, I believe I know. It wasn’t that I was inured, wasn’t physical fatigue.

It was fear.

Chapter Fifteen

Fear is a strange, insidious phenomenon. Especially when there seems to be no reason for it.

Take my case. Why was that rat crouched in my stomach, gnawing on my innards? I kept visualizing the trench rats chewing—with great relish—the eyeballs and livers of dead soldiers. Why should that grisly image keep recurring to me? But it did, day by day, worse by night when I was trying to sleep—either by myself in Edward’s room or in bed with Magda, our nude bodies pressed together. I simply could not rid myself of the terrible vision. I actually felt teeth nibbling on my stomach, cold ones. I did my best to will the images away. In vain. I even allowed myself—my belief system affected by my forced acceptance of the Middle Kingdom as a frightening reality—that Edward’s spirit, resenting my presence in his room (in his house) was haunting me. I seriously considered asking Magda to perform some kind of exorcism ritual to compel Edward to leave me be. I realized then that the request would offend—and, more likely, hurt Magda, since it was so obvious, by everything she said, not too often but often enough, that she still grieved for her lost son. How deeply she grieved for him became—alarmingly—evident one night when we were in the throes of physical arousal and Magda whispered, frenziedly it seemed to me, “Fuck Mama! Fuck her!” In that moment it, somehow, excited me. Later, it dismayed me. What exactly was my position in her life? Was I only substituting for her dead son?

Which left me where? In a state of greater fear. Uneasy fear. Discomforting fear. I wasn’t sure it was legitimate fear, but as time went by, I began to think that it was something like that. Which made no sense at all. Magda, on a daily basis, was as kind to me as anyone could be. Our sex life continued unabated—conditioned, of course, by my mounting disengagement from it. That, alone, was senseless. I was 18, not 180.

She made chefworthy meals for me, washed—and ironed—my clothes, conversed with me whenever I felt inclined to do so, was constantly affectionate, never mentioned my poorly disguised lack of involvement with our lovemaking, though I knew she was aware of it. Often, when neither of us had achieved fruition (is that the proper word—you know what I mean), she only kissed me warmly and permitted me to sleep. Which, as I have indicated, was scarcely achievable by me anymore.

Accordingly when, one evening at supper, she told me that she had to leave for three days—the Wicca celebration of the summer solstice—I didn’t feel the pang of abject anxiety I know I would have suffered at the outset of our relationship. I felt, instead, almost a feeling of blessed relief—for which I inwardly—if dishonestly—castigated myself. I hoped there was no outward evidence of my spurious emotion. “Do you have to leave?” was what I said. Did it sound insincere? I didn’t intend it to. “Yes, dear,” Magda replied. “It’s something I never miss.” Good, I thought, hoping my reaction was not evident on my face.

So she left and I was alone in her house. Which, at first, rather unnerved me. Did she have it “booby-trapped” with arcane witch protections? Was Edward’s spirit, now untrammeled because his mother had departed, going to pounce on me? I slept on the main room sofa the first two nights. Then, little by little, the rat gave up its chewing residence in my gut and I began to feel free of anxiety. I realized that the freedom had to do with Magda’s absence but attributed the distressing emotion to imagination brought on by my being so stunned by the magic of her healing ritual.

Why I felt that way, I couldn’t tell you. The magic accomplished nothing but good. So powerful, however, what would prevent it from being equally as powerful in the service of evil? Which thinking plunged me into an abyss of dark imaginings about faerie evil combined with Magda’s magic power, all intermixed to reduce me to a rat-devoured distress once more. I fought away the horrid blend of superstitions, but it took me time. Days, in fact.

It all came back, full force, one morning when I went—let’s be honest—intruded into Magda’s library. There I found what was, in the beginning, no more than a tastefully furnished, bookcase-laden room that would encourage reading, bring on studying.

Then I found the manuscript. Perhaps I should write the word in capital letters. MANUSCRIPT. That does seem more appropriate. To me, at least. The manuscript was centuries old, brown at the edges. Yet somehow clearly readable.

I wondered why in God’s name (His presence nowhere evident in the MS.) Magda had not hidden the manuscript more judiciously. It was in one of the bottom desk drawers, easily visible. The thought did not occur to me that Magda assumed I would respect the privacy of her library. I was too shocked by what I saw to consider that.

What did I see? I’ll describe it briefly as I can. To me, it ran a close second, if that, to the horrors of trench warfare. What were they? I hesitate to describe them at all. I’ll try.

A potion prepared (apparently) in a caldron to induce invisibility. Not too shocking that, though totally incredible. Read on.

Shape changing (I believe it’s called “shifting”), the ability—or power to alter form to whatever different form one chooses to achieve. In the illustration, a young woman was changing her form to that of a wolf. The vivid depiction showed, in disgusting, graphic manner, her body opened up, her bone structure being cracked and reshaped, her head distorting to the vulpine appearance of a wolf—with every gruesome step of the transformation totally diagramed. Ending with her congruence to that of a red-eyed, slavering wolf. That was the initial shock I underwent.

Shock number two, even worse. I will not (I refuse to) describe every loathsome detail of it. Perhaps the very words will tell you enough. Self-aborting of unwanted chimera (monsters). Illustrated in realistic minutiae. Enough said about that. I came close to losing breakfast as I viewed it.

I could go on, but taste prevents me. I will do no more than sketch a few more of the manuscript’s abominations. Sexual attacks from a distance. Summoning of chosen demon. Restoration of the dead. Et cetera and God help us all. I cannot go on. The illustrations were virtually pornographic in their unmistakable detail. That held my attention for a while. But, even at eighteen, I was so sickened that I had to turn away, restore the manuscript to its drawer, and leave the study as I would a satanic temple—or some such. I could not allow myself to believe that Magda approved—much less, God forbid, practiced these profanities. Wicca permitting such dreadful disciplines? (Now there’s a worthy A. Black combination!) Impossible. The manuscript had to be used as a research tool, nothing more. I made myself believe it—although that damned oversized rodent returned to nibbling at my insides. It wasn’t Wicca, I kept telling myself; it couldn’t be. It was more like black magic. Magda practicing black magic.

I did no more unwonted investigation of Magda’s home. I acted like a well-behaved houseguest from that point on. I’d already had more than my share of freakish incidents, enough to last a lifetime. How about my term of service in the trenches? Weird enough. Add the lump of gold proffered to me by Harold Lightfoot. On top of that, the unexplainable appearance (A. Black combo—good) of the gold lump in my duffel bag. The almost unlocatable existence of Gatford. The bizarre behavior (I’m getting A. Black combos, head over heel now!) of the barkeep in the Golden Coach. The odd behavior of Gatford’s jeweler, Mr. Brean, including his eager purchase of the gold lump, his guidance of me to the absurdly named Comfort Cottage. Joe Lightfoot (his name another anomaly—A. Black again!) warning me about entry into the woods. My first experience there, strange if not fatal. Joe informing me that Magda was a witch. Strange again. Her rescue of me from my second experience in the woods, strange and almost fatal. Her explanation of her particular witchdom. The commencement of our sex life. The onset of the nibbling rat. Finally, the terrible manuscript. I’ve overlooked Mr. Brean’s agitated entry into my cottage with his handful of gray dust, claiming that it was all that was left of the gold. Dear God, hadn’t I already lived through enough strange ordeals? More than enough. I’d had it. Give me respite.

At which, the strangest incident of all occurred.

It happened on a lovely sunlit afternoon. So lovely, in fact, that the house seemed stifling (not a workable combo) to me, giving me a desire to go outdoors, maybe for a walk along the path—avoiding the woods, of course. So I sallied forth into the inviting afternoon, ambling along the path. I felt certain I was safe from faerie intrusion so long as I remained on the path. It really was an enjoyable day, warm with a slight breeze, the sky blue and cloudless, the woods beautifully—though, I sensed, threateningly—lush with greenery.

Then I heard the singing.

I call it “singing,” but that is too elemental a word. Call it angel singing, if you will. For surely, if angels do sing, that is precisely what they sound like, what I heard. I stopped in my tracks and listened, entranced, as the singing went on. What never struck me as foolhardy was that, after a brief hesitation—probably less than a minute—I had entered the woods, absolutely spellbound, unafraid, drawn by the heavenly singing. It did not occur to me for an instant that I might be being hypnotically drawn to my doom. (Not an A. Black combination, but a most acceptable phrase—“drawn to my doom.” I love it; A. Black, that is.) I moved on, heedlessly enraptured by that angel voice. Now I thought I heard the sound of water splashing from a height. A waterfall? I couldn’t tell. But I was sure I heard it as well as the singing. On and on through the completely unmenacing woods, through a grove of birch trees, constantly drawn by the angelic singing.

Finally, I saw her.

She had just stepped out from underneath the sparkling waterfall. She was nude. I cannot use the word “naked”; it seems too crudely explicit. Never have I seen nudity as so completely innocent. She was obviously a young woman, yet conveyed the presence of a child. She was no more than three feet tall, almost doll-like in her exquisite beauty. Her hair was golden; not blond but golden, it’s the only way I can describe it. Her skin was as white as cream; her figure slight but clear. Nor did she seem at all disturbed at her nudity when she saw me looking at her, made no move to conceal her female parts. Even that sounds gross to me. What I mean to say is that her modesty was evident despite her unclothed state. She actually smiled at me. “Hello,” she said. It was spoken in a welcoming manner. Then she added, dumbfounding me, “You’re Alex.”

I had no voice. It was paralyzed by wonder. She smiled again, knowing that, somehow. “You wonder how I know your name,” she said.

“I do,” was all I could manage. How do I describe what I was going through? Amazement, yes. Incredulity at the entire moment. Physical attraction to her captivating body. Embarrassment that I even felt such a thing, her innocence was so apparent.

“I know a lot about you,” she said. She moved close to me. (I felt like a lumbering giant in her presence.) Standing on her toes, she kissed me lightly on the cheek. “I’m glad to have you back,” she told me.

For a moment, old caution beset me. Have me back? Hadn’t she made my two visits to the woods—especially the second one—terrifying to me? I didn’t want to darken the magic of this moment by confronting her with doubt. I had no choice, however. I had to know.

“Why did you—” I was going to say, try to kill me? but I couldn’t, simply couldn’t. If she was luring me to destruction, I would have to go along with it. And she was gazing at me so sweetly, so guilessly, that I could only complete my question with, “—chase me the last time?”

Her laugh was musical delicacy. “That wasn’t me,” she said. “That was my brother, Gilly. He despises human beings. His father was shot by a hunter. Gilly never recovered from that.”

“I don’t blame him,” I heard myself responding, “He did scare the… insides out of me, though.” I couldn’t say “hell” to that innocent face.

“Oh, he meant to harm you, no doubt of that. I’m glad the witch from across the way threw down primrose flowers. It infuriated Gilly that he had to stop and pick them up—but he had no choice. We have that weakness, I’m sorry to say. You have none in your pocket, do you?” Again, that burst of caution. Was she trying to discover whether she was vulnerable to me? It seemed ridiculous to consider, since I’d come all this distance without incurring any harm. But I was compelled to say, “I don’t know, I haven’t checked my pockets lately.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” she said. “I’m not going to chase you. I brought you here, didn’t I?”

Yes, you did, I thought. Who was I to doubt this innocent child, anyway? Child? I was mistaking her height and manner for age. Her round, smooth breasts, though far less expansive than Magda’s, and flowery cilia disproved. “Cilia” is the nicest way I can express it. I wouldn’t, for the world, cheapen my description of her. She was too priceless, too… I must say it, too angelic. It wasn’t just her singing. It was everything about her, head to toe. How could any creature be so perfect? I have no way of analyzing her incomparable pureness. Don’t try me. Can’t do it. Need I add that I became immediately enamored of her? Had I been three feet tall, I would have told her, on the spot, that I was totally in love with her. But I was six feet two inches tall, an ungainly colossus before her. I would have been ashamed to mention love to such a divinely perfect, diminutive creature. My opinion about faerie folk had altered utterly. If she was a sample, the Middle Kingdom was one of magic. Harold had been out of his mind to warn me about it, if that’s what he’d actually done.

“Are you afraid of me?” she asked. So sweetly that it made my eyes begin to tear.

“No,” I assured her. “Although—,” I added without thought.

“Although—?” she asked; anxiously it seemed to me.

“It was a little… scary,” I said.

“Scary? I don’t know that word,” she replied.

“I mean it—startled me.” Be honest! commanded my brain. “Frightened me,” I said.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she told me. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.” She smiled, that totally beguiling smile. “Well, maybe a little,” she confessed—pleasantly, I thought. “I wasn’t sure about you. Now I am. That’s why I brought you here unharmed. I could have—” She didn’t finish, but I got the point. She had abilities I knew nothing about. And wasn’t sure I wanted to.

“Well, I’m glad you brought me here,” I said. “It was with the singing, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right.” She smiled again. I was absolutely charmed by that smile. Magda had a nice smile, too, but nothing like—

“What’s your name?” I asked, needing to know.

“Ruthana,” she answered, pronouncing ana as “anya.”

“That’s a lovely name,” I told her. “You already know mine.”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “Now let me put my clothes on, and we’ll talk some more.” I’d forgotten (so help me God!) that she was nude throughout our conversation to that point. Her artless nudity dissuaded physical response.

I watched as she dressed. Her garb was certainly atypical, more a gossamer mantle that she wrapped around her body from the waist down and draped across her left shoulder, leaving her right breast uncovered. I noticed that the nipple was erect and wondered, for a foolish instant, if she was attracted to me. I knew, in the following instant, that such a possibility was… well, impossible. She was too virtuous for that.

She pointed toward a large flat rock I had not noticed. (I hadn’t noticed anything but her since first we met.) “Shall we sit and talk?” she asked. So appealingly that I would not have demurred for all the gold in the world. I moved to the stone—it was really a boulder—and sat beside her. I wanted to take her hand but found it unnecessary, as she took mine, with that irresistible smile again. “There,” she said, as though an unspoken rule had been observed. “Now let’s talk.”

“Yes, let’s,” I said, feeling stupid at the lack of meaning (to me) in the words.

“You live with the witch across the way,” she said.

“Is she a witch?” I asked. I knew the answer. Did I want an explanation? Who knows?

“Oh, she is,” said Ruthana. “We know she is.”

All I could respond was, “Oh.” God, I felt stupid.

“Is she cruel to you?” she asked.

“No, she isn’t,” I said. Despite that gnawing rat of uneasiness, I felt a need to defend Magda. “I guess she is a witch,” I started my defense lamely. “But she’s never been cruel to me, she’s always been—” How far could I go? “—kind and… thoughtful.” I knew I wasn’t going to mention the manuscript; that would really blacken the conversation. I wouldn’t even bring up the healing ritual. Too much witchlike emphasis in that.

“Well, I’m glad,” Ruthana said. “I was worried about it.”

Worried about it? How come? Did that mean she was truly concerned about me? Why? Wasn’t I one of the human beings that they loathed?

“I thought—,” I began.

“Oh, no.” She cut me off.

“What?” I asked her, anxiously.

“Gilly is coming,” she told me.

The words chilled me. Within that moment, I was back in the woods being chased by him, that thundering pursuit by elephants through a bamboo forest. Ruthana’s words seared my mind. He despises human beings.

“Come,” she said. She was on her feet in a flash (no better way to describe it), pulling me to mine so sharply that it caused a wrenching of pain in my arm. “This way,” she said, beginning to run. Yanked off my stance by her unexpected strength, I could only dash beside her, filled with dread. How awful was her brother? What did he know about me being there? He must have known, it came to me in a cold rush. Why else was his sister running me through the woods, a look of panic on her lovely face. Not so lovely now, her beauty obliterated by fear. My god, this Gilly must be monstrous! I thought, stunned by dread. We ran and ran. Ruthana never said a word. I heard no heavy breathing from her; it all came from me. I didn’t dare to say I was already getting a stitch in my side. I had to keep running, impelled by terror. I mustn’t let Gilly catch up to me. I mustn’t!

Miraculously, we were at the path, and Ruthana pushed me toward it. “Wait,” she said then. Raising on her toes, her small hands gripping my arms, she kissed me on the lips, I realized (incredulous despite my lingering fear), passionately.

“I love you, Alex,” she whispered.

Then she was gone, swallowed by the woods. I never caught sight of Gilly. He must have noted my escape and given up pursuit. Was he chasing Ruthana now? How much animosity did he bear her? Could he hurt her? I wanted desperately to know. Was she lost already? How was I to know? I trudged back to Magda’s house with only one thing resounding over and over in my brain. Ruthana’s final, incredible words. I love you, Alex.

God! I thought. I love you, too! Meaningless, of course. I was a human; she, a faerie. She had to know it was impossible for us to love each other. Totally impossible.

I reached the house and went inside.

Magda was waiting for me.

Chapter Sixteen

I prepared myself for a scolding. Magda had obviously, only then, returned. She was still dressed up, her suitcase on the floor. She’d just removed her hat and was holding it in her hands. Now what? I thought. I tensed myself for the worst.

She threw me off balance with her smile. “Been out for a stroll?” she asked.

What should I say? I wondered. How much should I tell her? “Yes,” I answered. “It’s such a nice day.”

“Good,” she said. “Have you been all right?”

“Oh, yes,” I lied. “I’ve been fine.” It would be anxiety-making enough to keep it all a secret. But I would. The alternative was unacceptable.

She came over to me and gave me a lingering kiss. “I missed you, darling,” she said.

I missed you, too. I knew I should have responded but held it in, unable to speak. All I could think was how (terrible word) hefty Magda was compared to Ruthana. I knew, even at that moment, that it was an illogical comparison, yet there it was. I tried to tell myself that Magda, like myself, was a human being, Ruthana a faerie. (Interesting how fully I accepted their existence now.)

My thoughts were cut away as Magda said—almost wistfully, I thought, “Didn’t you miss your Magda?” She was a beautiful woman. We were (or had been) lovers. Why did I feel so disturbingly estranged from her? Was I that frightened of her?

I chose to lie again. “Of course I did,” I answered. Then I overdid it. My excuse? Eighteen and dense. I kissed her neck and caressed her left breast. (How large they were compared to Ruthana’s.) “I missed everything,” I lied; again a lie, I was a dolt. Stop it! I told myself.

Either I convinced her or she convinced herself. She pressed herself against me (she was so fleshy!) and took my lips for her own. Her warm, wet tongue slipped in between my lips and searched my mouth. She picked up my hands and pressed them to her swelling breasts. “Soon,” she whispered, “very soon, my love. Take me any way you want. Any way at all.”

Oh, God, I thought. This wasn’t what I wanted. Far from it. My loins might be in preparation, but my mind was not engaged. I loved Ruthana. The realization came as a shock to me. Here I was, my beautiful, voluptuous lover thrusting herself against me, yet, even responding physically, my devotion was elsewhere. Part of me, logical even at eighteen, seemed to know that I was being stupidly unrealistic. I wished to heaven that Ruthana had not said what she did. It only confused my teenage lack of intellect. I had no right to deceive Magda this way. I knew that much. Accordingly, I made a spontaneous—utterly stupid—decision.

“I went into the woods today,” I said. Honesty is the best policy? Not always.

Magda’s reaction was galvanic. She pulled away from me so rapidly, a trace of saliva descended her lower lip. She brushed it away, irritably, looking at me with demanding eyes. Witch eyes, it (wrongfully, no doubt) occurred to me. Would she now reveal her dark powers to me?

Instead, she only gazed at me remorsefully. I knew she’d been offended. Even hurt? I wasn’t sure. Even as she said, “You didn’t tell me.”

“I know,” I answered. “I should have. I’m sorry.”

Silence from her. Then, “And did the little people chase you out?” I knew that she could not imagine what had really happened.

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t like that.”

“What was it like?” Now her tone had stiffened, and I knew I was in for it.

I swallowed dryly. I was very nervous. Surely she could see that. “The girl I met—,” I started.

“Girl?” she interrupted. Was that anger in her voice? Sarcasm?

“Young woman,” I corrected.

“Young woman,” she repeated. Stiffly.

“All right, faerie,” I said, slightly aggravated by then. “She was a little person. Maybe three feet tall.”

“And what did she do?” Magda asked. Demanded, I sensed.

“Nothing,” I said. “We talked.”

She gazed at me reproachfully. “Talked?” she said; not a question.

I answered it as one, however. “Yes,” I said. My youthful ire was rising; I had little control of it in those days. “We talked.”

“And that was it?” she asked. Was that a hint of genuine curiosity now?

“That’s all,” I said.

“And then you left,” she said. I knew she didn’t believe a word of it.

“That’s right,” I said. “Then I left. Without harm.” I would not, I vowed at that moment, tell her about Gilly’s pursuit and, God knew, about Ruthana telling me she loved me.

“Alex,” Magda said then. “Darling.” I reacted in surprise. Her tone had changed completely. Now what? I thought, confused.

“Did you really believe that nothing happened to you but a harmless conversation with a faerie?” Her question was given without rancor, but I knew it was intended as criticism. Mild, perhaps, but criticism nonetheless. I knew, for sure, that I would not reveal the rest of it.

“And then you left. Without harm?” she repeated my words.

“Yes,” I said. I was really getting riled now. Witch or no witch, what right did she have—?

She broke the mood (her mood) in an instant. “You’re not telling me the truth, my dear,” she said. The last part of her accusation perplexed me. Was she being understanding—or derisive? I wished I knew but didn’t. The best I could say was, “What do you mean?” I used to say that to the Captain, delaying the necessity to respond to any given question. I knew I was doing the same delaying ploy but hadn’t the wit to deter it.

“I mean,” she said—as though my question deserved a reply. “A lot more happened to you. Did the young woman escort you from the woods?”

“Yes,” I said. Then felt the compulsion to add, “We were being chased. The same way you and I were.”

“Chased by—?” she asked—okay, demanded.

I sighed—audibly. The cat was out of the bag. Partly, anyway. “Her brother,” I told her.

“Brother,” she said.

Damn it, stop repeating me! My mind exploded. I had the good sense not to articulate it.

“Yes, brother,” was all I said.

“His name?” she demanded; she was making no attempt to conceal her interrogative irritation (good, damn it, combo!) now.

“Gilly,” I answered, pronouncing his name clearly.

“Gilly,” she repeated.

“Magda,” I protested.

She relented; a little. “And was it he who chased us?” she inquired.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It may have been.”

“But this young woman—this faerie—led you from the woods, unharmed.”

“Exactly,” I said, refusing to back down from her persistence.

“Oh, Alex,” she said. Now her voice was devoid of vexation. If anything, it was no more than a form of gentle exasperation. “Don’t you understand at all?”

I could feel my lips bearing down on each other. “Understand what?” I demanded.

“You remember what I called them?” she asked.

“Called them?” For the moment, I didn’t know what she was referring to.

“I called them fooligans,” she reminded me. “You remember?”

I did. “And you’re saying—?” I began.

“Yes,” she said, not letting me finish. “You’ve been fooled.”

“Why?” I insisted.

“Because you were,” she said.

“That’s no answer,” I retorted, angry again.

Magda stiffened—it was not difficult to notice. For a second or two, I stiffened myself, a tinge of fear in me. Then, as visibly, she softened her expression and said, “Alex, I don’t know why; the faeries are, very often, beyond understanding. To be frank, I’ve never heard of anyone being treated as you were. The young woman must have been attracted to you, that’s all I can think of.” It was said so casually that I’m certain she saw the look on my face, an expression of astonishment that she had, so effortlessly, divined the actual occurrence. If that was the actual occurrence.

“I’ll only say one thing, then we’d better let the subject go,” Magda said. She looked into my eyes for several moments, then completed her remark. “The young woman—a faerie, if that’s what she was, and I’m not so certain—placed her mark on you. You must be careful, Alex. You must look to me for protection. Now, let’s be done with it. You’re safe here; that’s all that matters.”

Questions flooded over me. She wasn’t certain Ruthana was a faerie?! Why? And if not a faerie, what? An image flashed across my mind. That delicate creature. What else could she be but some preterhuman being? A missing citizen of Gatford? Beyond belief. What, then? And, further, “placed her mark on me”? What was that? Witch talk? If Ruthana was not some preternatural entity, how could she place a “mark” on me, anyway? All these questions flushing through my beleaguered head at once. Poor Alex White. Eighteen and non compos mentis.

At any rate, I didn’t have a clue as to what was going on.

Dinner did not help. We had an early supper because Magda was hungry. Her bus trip was a long one, without food. There was not enough time to prepare a meal.

So we shared a cold ham and salad. But I deviate.

I had been mulling over what had been said between Magda and me. Moreover, I had been reenacting, in my mystified skull, my meeting with Ruthana. And, for the life of me, I could not recall a single instance of her behavior conveying menace, much less evil, to me. In my mind, I heard her gentle, musical voice. I saw again (visualizing it distinctly) her running me through the woods, gripping my hand so tightly. I relived, in thought, the magical moment in which, standing on her toes, she’d kissed me (yes, passionately!) on the lips and whispered, “I love you, Alex.” If, indeed, she had “marked” me, that was the moment when it happened. Again—and again—I reheard that wonderful whisper too soft for A. Black, too romantic. What? MIDNIGHT WHISPER? That would never sell. No horror whatsoever. A. Black would get a summarily instant rejection. But I deviate once more. Shame on the storyteller.

“Magda,” I said at dinner, girding my loins in advance; I hoped.

“Yes, Alex?”

“What did you mean, Ruthana placed her mark on me?”

“Who?” she asked, immediately adding, “Oh, is that her name?”

“Yes,” I said, a tinge of bristle in my immature voice. (I must cease this, harping on my age! So I was eighteen, so what? I should have been more acute? Yes, I should have.)

“And something else,” I went on. “You said you weren’t sure she was—is—a faerie. What else could she be? If not a faerie, how could she place a mark on me? What is a mark, anyway?”

Her amused smile aggravated me. “Which question shall I answer first?” she asked.

I let the faint sarcasm in her question pass me by. “What else could she be?” I asked. Not too politely.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think she probably is a faerie. From the way you described her.”

Had I done that? There was no memory of it. “Did I describe her?” I asked—or, rather, challenged.

“Yes, you did,” she answered. “I saw it in your mind. Three feet tall, golden hair, slender, naked. Were there wings?”

Was she taunting me? I wasn’t smart enough to know. I couldn’t dwell on the possibility, anyhow. My mind fell over itself, trying to analyze how she could describe Ruthana at all. Was she psychic? Were all witches psychic? Wings? Had there been wings? I hadn’t noticed. It seemed unlikely—but the entire incident seemed unlikely. Had it really happened? Had it been only a hypnotic dream, an unaware hallucination? No! My brain rebelled against that explanation. It happened! Just as I remember it, God damn it! Who was Magda to tell me otherwise? The fact that I knew full well it was my own mental confusion seeking an answer, I did not allow.

“No, there weren’t wings,” I finally managed to say. “I would have seen them.” Irrelevant! screamed my mind. We’re losing direction here! “All right, she’s a faerie,” I said. “We agree on that. Why didn’t she harm me? Why take me out of the woods? Why defy her brother that way?”

“You’re so sure it was her brother?” she asked. “This Gilly?”

A whole new kettle of fish. “What do you mean?” I asked; all I could say.

“Did you see him?” she probed.

I thought I had her there. “Did we see him when you were… rescuing [I had difficulty mouthing the word] me that day?”

“No, I didn’t,” Magda said. “Neither one of us did.”

The significance of her reply didn’t strike me for a few seconds’ time. Then it did. “You’re saying—?”

“I’m saying, dear boy, [Don’t call me that! my mind resisted] that, on both occasions, you didn’t see this Gilly. You accepted this—Ruthana’s word that it was her brother chasing you.”

“And who was it?” I opposed her. “Ruthana?” I grimaced at using her name so callously. “The girl? The young woman?”

“Can you deny the possibility?” demanded Magda. Like, I imagined, a court lawyer challenging her opponent with an unanswerable challenge.

“Yes, I deny it!” I cried, too loud, way too loud. “If you’d spoken to her…” But I knew I’d lost the point. I hadn’t seen Gilly, not once. I’d accepted Ruthana’s words. Never questioned them a single time, I was so enraptured by her presence. Cold teenage cynicism swept across me. Had Ruthana lied about her brother? Did Gilly even exist? Oh, Christ! I thought. Magda was right. I hated her for being right but had no way of conflicting with her. She’d lived in this house a long time. She had known about the Faerie Folk a long time; she was right across the way from them! How could I contradict (or dare to contradict) her?

Dear God, was Ruthana really a “fooligan”? Had she tricked me?

Why?

Why plagued me into the night. I slept (didn’t sleep) in Edward’s bed. Magda wanted me to sleep with her—undoubtedly to couple. I demurred. Not too graciously, at that. Magda seemed to accept my unwillingness. She seemed (again, “seemed”) to understand my temporizing, only smiling, kissing me, and murmuring, “Tomorrow, then. You know how much I’ve missed your love.” That’s right, make me feel guilty about that as well! I thought, at least having the good sense not to express it aloud.

So I went into Edward’s bed and spent a few plagued hours trying—in vain, of course—to get some sleep. I was surprised how much my body ached. Had the run in the woods taken that much out of me?

Repeatedly, I dredged up the recollection of my time with Ruthana. The more I did, the less able was I to go along with Magda’s words, however logical they were. I could simply not be convinced that Ruthana had some dark purpose in mind. If so, she surely would have enacted that purpose while I was with her. That was the time to “mark” me, if that was what she’d planned. Why try to trick me, telling me that her brother was coming, that he hated human beings? Was that scenario reasonable? What could she gain from it? How could she be sure I would even return to the woods so she could complete her malefic purpose? What was that purpose, anyway? It was all ridiculous. All that mattered was that final moment, and that passionate kiss, and her whispered words, “I love you, Alex.” That was it. Case solved. Court adjourned. She had “made her mark” on me.

I was hopelessly in love with her.

“I love you, Ruthana,” I whispered back to her.

Then twitched in sudden suspense. Something had dropped on the bed beside me.

For a moment—wildly, panic stricken—I imagined some horrific witch-driven creature, sent by a resentful Magda to attack me. I actually visualized, in that dread-filled instant, what that creature resembled, some sort of slime-enveloped growth, unrecognizable by any human standard, with yellow glaring eyes—all six of them—and a panoply of multicolored tentacles—plus numerous pointed teeth. (No wonder I accepted the publisher’s spawning of Arthur Black. He already lived partially inside my all-too-accessible brain.)

Then Magda murmured, “Did I wake you?”

For another instant, I imagined the monster addressing me. Then I knew it was her and knew, immediately, why she was there. “No,” I said after considering, for a moment, making snoring noises.

I felt her hands on my shoulders. The sleeve of her heavy robe touched me, and I knew instinctively that she was naked underneath. Verified as she stood for a second, then threw off the robe and pushed her way beneath the covers, pressing herself against me. Her body felt hot; it probably was. No, don’t, I thought, feeling immediate guilt. I had virtually rioted on her salacious body—encouraged by her to allow myself any uninhibited carnality I chose to indulge in. She had always responded in kind, reflecting each erotic impulse I evoked. Now, how could I—despite the face of Ruthana in my consciousness—rebuff her? But, surprising to say, I did not want to relish Magda’s fulsome body now. Worse, she could easily tell that I was not to be aroused by her. Even when, with sudden movement, she pushed down beneath the covers and plunged my organ (which, as usual, made no recognition whatsoever of my indecision and was fully prepared for action) deep into her burning mouth and ground down her teeth. Too hard. I gasped and muttered, “Don’t!”

She released me and stood, snatching up her robe. “Never mind,” she told me, sounding breathless, and peeved.

“I’m sorry,” I began. I’m just a little tired, I was going to add. There wasn’t time. She left before I could speak. Oh, God, what have I done? I thought in total dismay. I had the damned erection, why didn’t I just allow it to achieve its obvious goal albeit nonattached to my brain? I hadn’t done that, though. I’d blown it. In contrast to what Magda was trying to do. (Or was she, impulsively, preparing to bite it off? I had definite indentations on the topic under discussion.)

When I came into the kitchen the following morning, Magda was sitting at the table, an untouched cup in front of her. Leaning over, I kissed her on the cheek. “Good morning,” I said, as pleasantly as possible.

“You’d better leave,” was all she replied.

Chapter Seventeen

I stared at her, my heartbeat pulsing harder than it had been. “Leave?” I asked. I sounded, I thought, exactly like the little boy spoken to harshly by the Captain. “Why?” I managed.

“I think you know,” she said.

“Because of last night?” I asked, weakly again.

“Because of what it meant,” she said.

“Meant?” I really didn’t know the answer.

“Come on, Alex,” she told me, “use your brain.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, resisting her sarcastic tenor. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, dear boy”—here we go again, I thought—“whatever happened to you in the woods changed your entire attitude toward me.”

“How?” I asked, although I knew exactly what she was talking about. “Because of last night? I was tired, Magda. It had been a hard day.”

I was relieved that she didn’t comment on the fact that I had little excuse for claiming weariness. What had I been doing, chopping firewood all day? Mowing the lawn? Hardly. I’d been in the woods with Ruthana, was that why I was tired? If so, I could scarcely claim it as an explanation. Above all, I must not reveal, to Magda, what happened when I was with Ruthana. It didn’t tire me, anyway. It left me exhilarated. That, God knew, I couldn’t tell Magda.

While all this confused peregrination was taking place in my brain, Magda only gazed at me in silence. An expression on her face I was unable to read. Doubt? Sadness? Irritation? I couldn’t tell. Probably a combination of multiple reactions to my lame excuse. I waited in anxious diffidence, my heart still beating overtime. No matter I had come to mistrust Magda after finding the awful manuscript. No matter that she seemed, to me, to be ponderous in size compared to Ruthana. No matter all of that. I had no desire to be put from her home. Forced to retreat to the even more ponderous Comfort Cottage.

In vain. When she finally spoke, it was with a shake of her head. “No,” she said, “I don’t believe you. I want you out of my house.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Magda,” I protested. “Because of one night?” I said it knowing that her words were justified and mine weren’t.

“I’m old enough to be your mother,” she said. “Would you fuck your mother?”

I was startled by her crude remark. I had no idea how to respond.

She reached out a hand and took mine, smiling. For a moment of intense consolation, I thought that she’d changed her mind. Her words soon dashed that hope. “I’m sorry, dear, but you have to leave this morning.”

So I left. Not too happily, but I left. I took my clothes with me; she gave me a duffel bag to put them in, said it belonged to Edward. I trudged down the path, the duffel bag across my right shoulder. If I’d had a full white beard and two hundred extra pounds, I’d have resembled a morose Santa, I looked so ridden with gloom. I passed a man and didn’t even look at him.

And I took up residence once more in that awful structure inanely titled Comfort Cottage.

Where the nightmares began.

Maybe “nightmares” is the wrong word if you think it refers exclusively to frightening dreams; not so. What happened to me was more, much more. Check your dictionary. Nightmares can also refer to frightening incidents. Check your Synonym Finder (much better than the Thesaurus, so says Arthur Black). Typical similar-meaning words are torture, suffering, horror, terror-fraught, appalling, creepy, petrifying, et cetera. That’ll do. You get the point. A good deal (bad deal, actually) more than scary dreams. As you will see.

It all began the second night I was home—I mean back in “Comfort” (bah!) Cottage. Why not the first night? I don’t know. Perhaps the Initiator—as, I believe, the Sender (my word) is called, chose to give me one night’s grace before commencing the assault.

The assault, in the beginning, was inordinately subtle. I was lying on my bed, thinking—brooding, actually—about the sorry turn of events. My enchanting visit with Ruthana turned upside down and splattered with bile by Magda, followed by our dreadful evening in Edward’s bed and expulsion from the house the next morning, painful alienation from Magda. It was especially painful to consider the loss of—loss of—what was her name? How could I forget it already? That was maddening. I saw—or thought I saw—her standing in the woods. No, did I? I was wrong. I couldn’t remember what she looked like. Not at all. Now that was really maddening. Infuriating. How could I forget what… forget what? I wondered. Did I forget something? I couldn’t remember. Damn it! What would Mag… Mag… Now what was her name? Her? Was it a woman I couldn’t remember? No, that wasn’t it. I couldn’t remember anything. Where was I now? I could not recall. I was adrift in total memory loss. My brain had been washed of all remembrance.

The realization stunned me. No terror at first, just absolute confusion. All I could think of was knowing that I couldn’t remember anything. Nothing at all! And I knew it. At that moment, I had my first glimpse of the nightmare that had, somehow, been inflicted on me.

Next came the awareness (thinking was slower, too) that I felt as though, suddenly, I’d just undergone a week of heavy labor: utterly fatigued, completely drained. What’s more, an icy coating over my entire body. You don’t think that sounds nightmarish? Try it sometime. No, don’t, it’s too emotionally engulfing. Lying there, immobile, convulsed by shivering, unable to budge, something else began.

Voices.

I tried to determine whether they were male or female, but without success. If there was a way to differentiate, it was beyond my comprehension. For that matter, everything was beyond my comprehension. I was aware only of intense discomfort—both with my body’s ice-sheathed paralysis and my (inexplicable) dread now of the room it was in. What room it was and where that room was, I had no idea; I simply couldn’t remember. And the voices… what were they saying? They did not wish me well. Au contraire, their voices were laden with animosity. In the mental fog I was trapped in, I could pick out only disconnected phrases such as “darkness fill you,” “punish you,” and “suffer torment.” There were others, but I missed them in my physical and mental misery. (I know it’s inappropriate here, but that is a worthy Blackian combo.)

All right. Visualize my plight. Loss of memory, even of identity. Did I mention that? It was part of the nightmare assault. Why I remember so much of it now… Well, I am, at present, in control of my faculties. Then, I wasn’t.

Where was I? Loss of memory and identity. Check. Utter fatigue and frigidity. Check. Frigid fatigue. (No, I won’t say it.) The conviction that someone was watching me. The voices chilling me more than I was already chilled. I forgot to mention the someone looking at me. Well, I’m eighty-two, I don’t remember things in perfect order. I do remember that, however. Basically. And I was terrified, let me tell you. I will add only one fact, and that is God’s truth.

All this really happened. It was in 1918, and I was the age of the century, the “18” part, I mean. Pardon me for my poetic levity. I’m simply trying to emphasize that all this did occur as I describe it. Well, far more vividly than I was able to portray the nightmare I endured that initial night in Comfort Cottage.

In the morning, I felt sick. Nothing specific. Just sick; all over. The exhaustion and frigidity had abated, but that was all. I ached. My head felt clogged, as did my nose. My eyes burned.

The downstairs room felt oppressively airless, and I had to get outside. I moved to the door and opened it. Another shock. Good God, an apparition! cried my mind. It wasn’t. It was Joe with a large bag in his arms. “Jesus, Joe, you keep on scaring me,” I told him irritably.

He didn’t reply. Then he said, “You don’t look well.”

“I’m not,” I snapped, “I’m sick.”

“You look it,” Joe observed. Thanks for agreeing with me, my mind retorted nastily. “Thanks,” was all I said. It came out just as nastily.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. Before I could respond, Joe added, “Can I bring this bag inside? I brought you some food.”

“I had some,” I replied, ungraciously.

“It was spoiled,” Joe said. He brushed past me and carried the bag to the icebox. “I brought you more milk and bread,” he told me. “Ham, apples.”

“Let me pay you,” I grumped. You’re trying to make me feel guilty, my brain accused.

“Never mind that now,” Joe said. “Close the door and let’s talk.”

“I was just going outside,” I informed him. “I need some fresh air.”

“No wonder,” he said.

I’d been about to thank him for the groceries, my better self aware of his kindness, but his remark closed that door. No wonder? What the bloody hell did that mean?

We went outside and, as if to verify my words, I took in several deep breaths.

“Well, what brings you here?” I asked, not pleasantly. “Outside of bringing me food. And speaking of that, how did you know I was back?” Harsh interrogation. I should have known better.

“Bill Bantry passed you a couple days ago,” Joe told me. “He said you were tugging a heavy bag. So I assumed you were back.”

He answered my questions in such a patient manner that I felt a pang of genuine guilt and managed a halfhearted smile. “Oh,” I said.

“So what is it that’s making you sick?” he asked. So much as a real father (as opposed to the Captain) would ask in concern that my guilt was multiplied.

“I wish I knew, Joe.” I answered, “I was attacked, I guess is the word, last night when I was trying to sleep.”

“What happened?” he asked. I could tell, from his expression, that he really was concerned for me; the reaction warmed me. Didn’t alleviate the feeling of sickness but helped immeasurably my state of mind. I had an ally, it occurred to me, warming me further.

So I told him everything, from the memory loss, to the deep cold exhaustion, to the voices, to the sensation that I was being watched.

“You couldn’t remember things,” Joe said when I had finished my account.

“Not only couldn’t remember anything, I couldn’t even think; my mind was blank.”

Joe regarded me in studied silence (good combo; sorry), then said, quietly, “Sounds like faeries to me.”

“Oh, come on, Joe,” I said. “All that?”

“Yes,” was his simple reply.

“But she couldn’t—,” I commenced, then stopped. Could I tell him about Ruthana?

“She?” he asked, reminding me of Magda’s query.

I hesitated, then had to remind myself that Joe was my ally, wanted only to help.

So I told him about my meeting with Ruthana.

“She led me from the woods, Joe.” I semi-protested, “She said she loves me.”

“Did you go back?” he asked.

“There wasn’t time,” I said.

“Did she expect you to?”

“Joe, how should I know?” I was demanding now.

“Alex,” he said (it was the first time he had called me that), “who else would know?”

Magda, my mind replied. But I didn’t want to drag her into this. I already had suspicions, which my conscious mind would not permit to enter. “All right, maybe I should know, but I don’t. Why do you bring it up?”

“Because the fact that you haven’t gone back could have angered her,” Joe said.

“And make her attack me like that?” I charged.

“She’s a faerie, Alex, not a human being. It isn’t possible to know how they think or act. And they do have powers. At a distance.” His last, emphatic words cut off my protest.

“But she was so sweet, Joe,” I said, adding hurriedly, “and she saved my life from her brother.”

“What brother?” Joe inquired.

“His name is Gilly,” I told him.

“Have you ever seen him?” Joe asked. Now he was saying the same thing as Magda. And it was true. I’d never seen Gilly; his existence was only a description by Ruthana. Now I was really confused. And deeply disturbed. (You know, A.B.) It had become more and more evident that the attack came not from Magda (my unadmitted suspicion) but that beautiful, ethereal creature Ruthana. I felt even sicker admitting it, but now I had no choice.

“Faeries don’t think the same way we do,” Joe told me. “We never can tell what they think. Or what they’ll do.”

“Joe,” I said; I was pleading now. “If she meant to do me harm, why didn’t she do it when I was with her? Why do it the way she did?”

“Alex,” first name again, warming but disturbing me further. “She could have made a mistake, or she did it as a game. We just don’t know how they’re likely to behave. That’s why we stay away from them. Why we avoid the woods. Didn’t I tell you not to go in the woods?” Now his parental concern had edged into scolding, and it made me horripilate. (Oh, there’s a word lifted from The Synonym Finder, not my brain.)

“Yes, you did,” I admitted despite the bristling (the word I should have used). I stared at him. “Now what?” I asked.

Chapter Eighteen

Now what? consisted of suggestions by Joe Lightfoot re methods by which to ward off faerie night attacks.

Suggestion 1: Prepare a bowl—four to five inches in diameter—by covering its bottom with a few inches of sand. On top of that, place several white sage leaves and set fire to their ends or edges. Once the flame has caught, blow them out and leave the leaves (bad prose—A. Black) to smoke. This smoke, said Joe, is what’s referred to as smudging. Pass the smoke around your head and body a number of times, then around the room in question.

The only drawback—when I asked Joe where we get white sage leaves, he didn’t know. “You could grow some,” he said.

“Great, Joe!” I cried, “Think I can grow some by tonight?”

He winced; the only time I’d ever seen him wince. “Maybe… mother of essence,” he suggested, “black tourmaline.”

“I’ll run right out and get some,” I snarled. I was losing all patience. This was serious business. I’d been terrified. I needed help here. The thought raced across my mind that Magda would be of more assistance. I chose not to follow that path.

“All right, let’s see what else there is.” Joe said, “I’m sorry about the white sage; that was stupid of me.”

He sounded so honestly repentant that immediate guilt took hold. He was only trying to help.

“You might try burning ragwort, but the smell would knock you out.”

“Anything else, Joe?” I inquired, bristling again.

“Well, yes, spoiled milk will sicken them. They love fresh milk, but spoiled—you have lots of that.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” I responded. I thought we were.

“No,” said Joe, demolishing that. “You’ll need something better. You want to consider a spell?”

“What’s that?” It sounded more promising than spoiled milk, anyway.

“It’s a little complicated,” Joe explained. “First of all, you have to know exactly what your goal is. Well, you do. To protect yourself against attacks. Isn’t that right?”

“Well, of course,” I agreed testily. “What else are we talking about?”

“Right,” said Joe. “That’s for sure, then. Next, you gather candles, stones, or whatever else you need. I can run into town and get those for you. Next decide what words you want to use. Write down whatever key ones you want to repeat, you know what they are.”

I do? My mind conjectured. Well, yes, without a doubt, I knew. Stop the damn attacks. Oh, Magda, I thought, I could really use some Wicca magic right now. No, my mind resisted. Not yet. I sensed that the realization was more tolerantly inclined but let it slide. The healing ritual had truly been impressive to me. It lingered in my memory.

These thoughts disabled my brain to Joe’s instructions as he rambled on. Step 5: If I desired the help of a special deity, I should decide on Him—or Her. I may need to write out special prayers and memorize them. Step 6: Be sure you clearly visualize your goal. If you want to make use of a particular faerie, decide which one it will be. Ruthana? I thought. Absurd if she was directing the attacks in the first place. Gilly? Yeah, that was a super idea. Step 7: Decide where you want to cast the spell. When is not considered, of course. The attacks must be averted tonight.

When it suddenly swept over me what this entire suggestion was, I threw up my hands in grated submission. “Joe! Enough!” I cried, “I can’t remember all that!”

He succumbed to silence and stared at me. (A triple combo! Arthur Black would go nuts.) Finally, with a faint submissive smile (another one God damn it!), he said, “Well, yes, I guess it is too much on such short notice. We’ll have to come up with something simple.” (Something simple, Arthur Black would be nonplussed.) “You can try hand clapping or whistling—faeries hate sharp noises.”

“Yes?” I said, “What else?”

“You can throw primrose blossoms around your bed,” Joe said.

“That’s right,” I enthused. “Magda did that, and it stopped Gilly’s chase.”

“You still believe there really is a Gilly,” Joe said.

“Yes, I do.” I had to affirm myself somewhere along the line. “Anything else?” I persisted.

“You have a cast-iron skillet,” Joe reminded me. “Put it near your bed. Or in your bed. And here—” He felt around in his right pocket and took out something, which he handed to me. An iron nail. “Stay dressed and keep it in your right pocket as I did; only the right. It makes a barrier around you. If you had a scythe, you could hang it over your doorway. Iron is the faeries’ worst enemy.”

Now we were really getting somewhere, my mind gloried. Why didn’t he start out this way? Why with the ridiculous white sage, spell suggestions? (I’ll ignore the triple [!] combo.)

“Thank you, Joe,” I said. “I really appreciate this.”

“Glad to help,” Joe replied. “Oh, yes, you can also put ashes—you have a fireplace [I did but had never used it] into bottles or small bags and place them in the windows. Faeries don’t like the smell of ashes. If you have a mirror, put it near your bed. Faeries hate mirrors. They prefer to see their reflections in pools of water. Too bad you haven’t got a cat. They chase away faeries.”

Good God, I thought. Joe Lightfoot was a regular font of knowledge regarding faerie dissuasion. God bless the man. What would I have done without him?

Was it my fault that I didn’t realize he was completely wrong?

I spent the afternoon preparing.

First of all, the primrose blossoms. I’d seen how well they worked. Unfortunately, I had no such blossoms. I’d thrown away what I had. Magda had a garden of them, but I was hardly going to knock on her door and ask if I could borrow some. I had a few scraps in my jacket, and these I distributed around my pallet, feeling an utter fool as I did. How could these pathetic scraps of blossoms turn away an attack? Looking down at them on the floor, I scowled. Darkly.

I tried the iron skillet next. I was going to nail it to the wall above my pallet, actually the underside of the roof. I had no hammer, though. Joe hadn’t offered to leave one. Whether he didn’t think I’d need one or never thought of it, I don’t know. At any rate, all I had in the way of nails was the one Joe had given me. I don’t think I could have nailed the damn thing up, anyway. The surface of the “ceiling” was more tile than wood. So I put the skillet on top of the pallet. It looked ridiculous there. How in God’s name could I sleep on that? I couldn’t. I put it on the floor next to the pallet. It looked absurd sitting on the floor, amidst those primrose scraps. I felt an utter fool again.

I’d decided to sleep fully dressed with my jacket on, the nail in the right side pocket as Joe had suggested. It would have been a lot more practical to rent a room at the Gateford House. Why didn’t I? To save money? No, that would be dumb. The reason I didn’t was more far-fetched but seemed a stronger idea. If and when the attack began (as I was sure it would), I’d appeal aloud to Ruthana. At that point, I pretty well believed what Joe had said. That it was a definite faerie attack. If so, who would be more likely the cause of it? Hard to accept, of course, she was so unbelievably sweet. Still… Someone was behind it. Gilly? Not hard to accept. Magda? That alarming possibility in my brain again. She’d put me from her house. She loved me, then felt betrayed when I told her about Ruthana. She had the means. But so did Ruthana. I remembered thinking that, in fact, I had no concept of just how powerful she really was. And she’d said she loved me. Did she also feel betrayed because I hadn’t gone back to her immediately? My brain was in turmoil. Ruthana? Gilly? Magda? Yoiks!

I had no idea, so continued with my preparations—which seemed, to me, increasingly insane. I was a Brooklyn boy, after all. I’d seen action in the trenches. I’d done well in school—the only reason Captain You Know Who endured my presence in his house. Wherever that happened to be, he was transferred on occasion. What I’m trying to say is that I had (I believe) a level head. So all this lunatic stuff was anathema to my common sense–oriented brain. It was not reality but insanity. Yet I could not deny that all of it was happening. It was and I had to accept it. Throw that in a mix in a logical brain, and what do you get? Immense confusion. Which is precisely the state I was in.

But, regardless of this—a jumble of aggravation, reluctant belief, and, undeniably, dread, I continued with the preparations. Putting ashes from the fireplace into empty jars Joe left me. Installation of same in the windows and air opening in the attic. I thought of searching for a cat, but there wasn’t time; it was already getting to be late afternoon. Soon it would be dark.

What then?

It was not fatigue but a sudden cessation of energy; somehow, I could tell the difference. The sensation of fatigue the previous night was not abrupt. It came on gradually. This was quick. In an instant. I was drained of strength. Almost numb with weakness. Was that someone touching me? Or was it bumping? I sensed the presence of someone nearby. Or something.

Watching me.

I began to see—or imagine I saw—shapes of dreadful shadows on the wall. Monsters of all variety. Formless creatures. Giant bugs.

I tried to clap my hands or whistle, but I couldn’t summon the ability to do either. I just lay there “like a bump on a log,” as my mother used to say. Why was I recalling that now? Ruthana! My mind cried, please stop!

It didn’t stop. It got worse. Now I wasn’t a bump on a log. I was a log. Useless, hopeless, weighing a ton, only my eyes—and terrified brain—still mobile. Shadows on the wall. Awful shadows. Menacing shadows. Ghastly shadows.

Then the voices began again.

A chorus of them. Rasping, rattling voices a cappella. “Die now! Suffer! Flesh be gone! Eyeballs eaten!” (For a stupid moment, I imagined all the war rats gathered together, wearing church robes, hosanna-caroling about their diets in the trenches.) Then good sense—actually, I was closer to being senseless at that moment—prevailed and I knew, again, that I was under psychic siege. Ruthana! I pleaded. Stop!

Instead of stopping, something much more hideous occurred.

A bloodcurdling scream seemed to gouge the air. My jumping eyes beheld a sight that, to this day, remains branded on my memory.

An ancient crone—a hag, I later learned—was rushing across the room at me, a look of maniacal glee on her face—which was half bone, half rotting flesh. Her dress was shredded rags, reveling her scrawny, sagging breasts, which flapped as she ran. Endlessly, from her mouth—she had no perceptible lips—the shrieking howl continued. Now I saw that her skin and—God Almighty!—her teeth were green! Not the green of plants or tree leaves. More the green of fungus—or of pond slime. In spite of my frozen state, I felt my stomach rumble and the taste of bile in my throat.

Then the hag had reached me and, with an unnatural leap, was on top of me, the scream going on, an expression on her foul face now one of lustful delight. I felt her bony fingers tearing at my pants. She began to kiss me torridly, her breath in my mouth (her tongue was cold and jagged) like a wind from an ancient sewer. I felt sick to my stomach again, felt a trail of vomit down my chin.

At which point, the hideous creature clutched at my organ—which, somehow, stupidly or controlled by psychic force (I downright refuse to believe I’d become aroused) had erected. At which the hag, cackling victoriously, thrust her skeletal loins onto mine and (well, use the word!) raped me. More than once. Until I wept and begged over and over, Ruthana, why?!

Then, in a second, all was ended. I could feel again. Nothing but a disabled stomach, total nausea. Severe grating pain in my genitals. Deep scratches on my chest.

And, for some reason, an enormous rage. Joe Lightfoot was stupid, he was wrong! His protections—none of which worked—were laughable. If anything had happened one could laugh at, which it hadn’t.

Ruthana? All that? Never! It had not been her. It could not have been. It was someone else. It had to be.

The witch Magda.

I raced across the wide lawn to her house, never once considering the possibility that something would be blocking my way or stopping me; I was too incensed for such consideration. I had to see Magda. Not another thought or anxiety crossed my mind.

Reaching the front door, I twisted its knob and shoved the door open. “Magda!” I shouted.

There was no reply, so I charged through the main room, shouting “Magda!” again. Still no response. “Dammit, Magda!” I raged, “Don’t try to hide from me!” Why I’d think of such a thing I couldn’t tell you. I was prepared for anything, I guess. Rage suffused me. I could hardly see straight. I rushed on, yelling her name repeatedly, even (stupid me) threateningly.

Into her bedroom. No one there. The gargantuan bed did not look menacing or, God knew, inviting. I yelled her name again, in case she was occupied in her private bath. No reply. “God damn it!” I snarled. This was taking too long. My prepared rant—I’d practiced it mutteringly on my long run from the Cottage—was already diminishing. I had to let it out soon. “Magda!” I was virtually screaming it by then.

Into her study. Nothing. I considered, for a wild second, getting out her sickening manuscript and tearing it into pieces. No time for that, though. I had my fury to unleash. “Magda!” I shouted yet again. My voice cracked. I was losing it. No, I thought, enraged. I had things to say to her. Say? Not strong enough, by half. Rant. Rave. Explode. That’s how I felt. “Magda,” I growled, teeth gritting.

I ran into the kitchen. No one. “Well, where the hell are you?” I grumbled. I shoved over the voluminous chair, pleased yet guilty at the sound of cracking wood.

My last attempt bore fruit (sour). She was in her vegetable garden, hoeing, a protective smock over her dress. At the sound of the back door slamming—I’d done it on purpose—she looked around in surprise. “Alex,” she said. The sound of her voice infuriated me, releasing my rant. (Not bad A.B.)

“Okay!” I started. (Not a notable beginning, but I really wasn’t thinking straight.) “God damn it!” (Better.) “You can throw me out because I offended you! You can make me go back to that lousy cottage! You can do all that! But did you have to torture me?! Have to attack me like that?! Look at me!” I tore open my shirt, showing her the discolored gouges on my chest. I jerked down my pants. “Look at my [can’t say it, rhymes with ‘sock’]! This is what you did to me! I’m covered with these! With bites! Are you happy?! Have you gotten even with me now?”

She didn’t say a word, her face without expression. I waited, but she remained silent. I thought of pulling up my pants, then decided, angrily, to let her look at my battered organ. I left my shirt open, too.

Finally, her dead silence irked me. Irked? Come on, Black, you can come up with a better verb than that. Try… “made me see red.” Fury really does that.

“Come on! React!” I ordered, ignoring the cracking sound of my voice. “Talk to me!” I should have said “speak,” but my tongue—and brain—was not controlled by grammar. “Talk to me!” I repeated.

She didn’t speak. She wept.

That caught me off guard. That I had never anticipated—or expected. Because her weeping was so sudden, so uncontrolled. Her sobs were violent, her cheeks quickly soaked with tears. I had never seen such unrestrained emotion from her, and it shocked me. I stood impaled between being stunned and trying, with decreasing success, to hold on to my anger.

She couldn’t speak. Any attempt to do so was swallowed by great sobs that racked her body so severely, she had trouble standing. I could tell that she was trying to speak but constantly failing. All I could do was stand there with my pants down, staring at her obviously brokenhearted state.

“Alex,” she managed to say at last. “Alex.” Faintly. Brokenly. Just audibly.

Then she managed more, struggling with the effort, unable to control her sobbing.

“How could you?” was all she was able to say between the spasmodic sobs. (Oh, boy. A. Black) And again. “How could you?” she asked.

Then she was lost in her weeping, unable to breathe, almost choking with her sobs, moaning—in pain, it sounded like. Embarrassed now (bare assed as well, I feel compelled to rhyme), I began to pull up my trousers. Magda, still weeping uncontrollably, shook her head and waved her right hand at me as though abjuring me to leave my trousers be. Not knowing what she meant, I left them down, well aware of the fact that I must have looked absurd, almost comical. “Magda, I don’t think—,” I started. She shook her head again, giving me the impression that she didn’t want me to say another word.

Finally, she regained her voice, albeit stricken with pain—and, to my amazement—remorse.

“How could you believe that of me?” she asked, she begged. “How could you believe I’d do such things? To you? The father of our child?”

Chapter Nineteen

Good God. The first two words to emerge from my smitten head. Our child? Somehow that seemed to alter everything. Where had fury gone? What rant was remaining? None. I stared at her in stricken muteness.

Then I said—I muttered, “Our child?”

“Alex,” she said. Was that a smile despite the tears? “We’ve… coupled quite a number of times. Without protection of any kind. Does it surprise you that I finally became with child?” (I believe the word “pregnant” wasn’t in common use back then.)

“Well—” My brain was, by now, completely flustered. “You—” No words took shape. Then, suddenly, the retort sprang. “If you knew that you were—carrying my child, how could you attack me that way?”

“Alex,” she said, her voice losing strength again. “What makes you think that I… attacked you?” The word, apparently, much pained her.

“Well, who else could do it?” I demanded. “Who else has that kind of power?”

She only gazed at me. As though she knew that the answer was already mine.

I guess I slipped up. I should have pursued the angry questioning. Instead, I asked (naïvely, I suspect), “They have such power?”

“And more,” said Magda.

Holy Christ, I thought. Now everything was being thrown back in my face.

“But the exhaustion,” I said, close to protesting now. “The loss of memory. The coldness. The horrible voices. I’d done everything I could to protect me. The primrose pieces around my bed, my pallet. The cast-iron pan. The ashes in the windows. All to stop them. Nothing worked! How could it be faeries, Magda?! How could it be?!”

“Not faeries, Alex,” Magda said. “Just one.”

Oh God, I thought. She almost had me convinced.

But I forged on. Trying desperately to vindicate Ruthana. “Two nights straight?” I persisted, “That hideous old woman doing this to me?!” I pointed forcefully to my beleaguered groin.

Her next words threw me totally.

“Take off your clothes,” she said.

I was unable to reply, my mouth hanging open. Then I managed to rage, “I’m in no condition!”

“Alex,” she cut me off. “I’m not suggesting lovemaking. I want to put some salve on your wounds.”

“Oh,” I said stupidly. Teenagedly. I simply knew no better at the moment.

Thus, obediently, probably sheepishly, I took off all my clothes, assisted by Magda, and stretched out, naked as a battered jaybird, on the kitchen table while Magda retrieved a small jar from a cabinet and undid the cap. “Now,” she said. The way she said it—so businesslike—made me think for a moment or two that the salve-spreading was somehow a dreadful encore to the attacks.

Then as the whitish cream—more than a gelatinous salve—was spread across my chest by Magda’s gentle fingers, I felt the pain diminishing noticeably. And when she applied it to my genitals, my know-nothing organ responded—as it usually did—with no discernment whatever regarding what had happened to it. Magda repressed a smile. “I thought you said you were in no condition to—?” she said. I was in no mood to be teased. “It’s just a reflex,” I mumbled. It sounded absurd.

“Of course,” she said. “I know that.”

Several seconds of silence as she continued rubbing, very carefully, all the bruises and deep scratches on me, front and back. I have to say that cream certainly did the job.

At last, she said, “That hideous old woman is called The Old Hag, a spirit in English folklore.”

“Magda,” I said, irritable despite my awareness of the fact that I was pretty helpless lying in the altogether on the kitchen table like that. “She was not a spirit. Look at me! Did a spirit do this?!” I gestured feebly at my maltreated groin.

Patiently, she answered, “Do you believe that spirits are unable to take on flesh and bone?”

“Flesh and bone?” I doubted. “A spirit?”

“Yes, Alex. Yes,” she said. Then, “Shall I show you books describing it? Photographs?”

“Well…” Grumpy now. I lapsed into a dissatisfied silence. Then a retort became my countering. “And you’re saying that Ruthana (I didn’t hesitate to use her name now) did all that to me?”

Her argument against the point was not expected. Nor well received.

“Consider, Alex. She allowed you to—no, lured you to her—even though the little people are extremely loath to permit such a meeting. She conversed with you amiably. Then, when you were convinced that all was well—while she was naked, no less.”

That shook me. Had I told her? I couldn’t recall. “Of course she was,” Magda continued, turning the knife a little more. “She had to be. To allure you. Can’t you see that?”

“No,” I muttered. Unsubstantiated by conviction.

“I think you do,” said Magda. “Anyway, just when you were most comfortable, she told you that her brother—her awful brother—was coming. And she staged a flight before her brother—and helped you escape.”

“That’s right,” I explained, lamely. “If she wanted to hurt me, why help me escape from her brother?”

“Who you never saw,” Magda stated. “You have no way of knowing if he really exists.”

“Well…” No retort to that. I didn’t know. Gilly truly might not exist.

“Oh, God,” I murmured. “She seemed so sweet, Magda. She said she loved me.” There, it was out. Magda would have made a good detective, wringing—or finessing—an involuntary confession from the felon in custody.

“I’m sure she did,” was all she said.

“I still don’t know why she let me go,” I told her.

“That is peculiar,” Magda replied. “I’ve never heard of that before. Another example of attempted faerie trickery, I suppose. Or she’s too young and hasn’t refined trickery yet. She may have expected you to return. When you didn’t…” She let that hang.

“And you think she has the power to—,” I began.

“I know she has the power,” Magda said firmly. “You can’t underestimate what they can do. Causing ‘things’ to happen from a distance is the least of them. I’m certain she’s old enough for that.”

“I was sure—no, I wasn’t sure, I suspected that it was you, Magda,” I said.

Her face fell. I can describe it no other way. “If you really believe that, Alex,” she started.

“Magda, I’m not sure what I believe anymore.” That was true enough. My brain was a jumble of possibilities—and confusions.

“If you do believe that I did all these terrible things, you have to leave again,” she said.

“And be attacked again?” I said. I was sure she knew I was kidding.

She smiled. “You’re done, get off the table,” she said.

I sat up. “Actually, that old hag wasn’t too bad looking,” I said.

“Oh, shut up.” Repressing another smile, she whacked me on the bottom.

So there it was. Resolution. At any rate, some kind of resolution. I still found it, bone-deep, difficult to believe that Ruthana had been guilty of those terrifying attacks, but on the other hand (no question why Pisces is labeled the trash bin of the zodiac; my brain was certainly a trash bin of doubts), Magda had convinced me (almost) that it wasn’t her. It was clearly true enough that I had no conception of how powerful the faeries were. If there really was a Gilly, he had accomplished his two pursuits in first-class fashion, scaring the living bejesus out of me on both occasions. I still had vivid memories of the elephant (they couldn’t have been real elephants, could they?) charge through the bamboo forest behind me. And Magda actually saved me from that! One more golden star for her. Dear God. Was I perplexed. In every way. I was a mental wreck. “Determination,” try to be my name!

It wasn’t.

To make a long story short (corny! A. Black), I remained with Magda. The witch. I shouldn’t say that. She was a wicce. That’s different. At least I always assumed it was. I should say Magda, the mother of my impending child. That really bollixed up my brain. Me a daddy? At eighteen? What next? A family of twelve? The prospect did me in. If Magda got pregnant that easy! How old was she? No younger than my mother, surely. Could my mother have had a baby at this age? The idea was appalling. The thought of her coupling with the Captain was enough to turn my stomach. What would he have done, assigned her a certified length of time to give shore leave to his navy-regulated sperm? Jesus Christ, the imaging was too revolting! I already had enough problems on my mind.

So I remained with Magda. In a mixture of trust and mistrust. I believed her, yet I didn’t believe her. Everything she said seemed (there’s that word again) indisputable. And yet, forever lingering in my psyche was the memory of that sweet-faced faerie named Ruthana. I knew that she seemed to possess powers (an A. Black combo; acceptable) I had no concept of.

Where was I? Yes, my inability to deny Magda’s words, yet my equal inability to deny the sweetness of Ruthana. So where did that leave me? On a rocking seesaw. On a wire, dangling above certainty and its opposite. In truth, I loved them both.

No, it was a love divided between Magda and my faerie charmer. One was the love of a son for his mother, albeit complicated by the fact that we were also lovers.

My love for Ruthana was—let’s call it—totally romantic. With all the flaws that word implies. Blinded vision. Illogical mentation. Ignorant bliss; the phrase is quite apt. I knew, when I considered what I still felt about Ruthana that I was being totally—probably absurdly—unrealistic. But what does an eighteen-year-old know about true reality?

I had, still, to learn.

All right, then, the love of a son for his mother. His beautiful, voluptuous, passionate mother. It was simple for a dull-witted teenager to feel love for a gorgeous mom. She treated me, as well, with all the care of a loving parent. So much so that, I confess, as weeks rolled by, I thought less of Ruthana all the time.

For then.

Magda cooked for me, baked for me. Absolutely scrumptious meals. Delicious cakes. Overwhelming biscuits. Do I make my point?

She kept me in clean clothes. Took me into Gatford to buy me new outfits. Once, anyway. The experience was so unpleasant that it pained and aggravated both of us. The looks. The poorly guarded smirks. The behind-the-hand mutters. Stupid yokels. All very irritating and disturbing. Especially to me. I gathered that Magda was not unfamiliar with such insulting treatment. If she had once been a welcome citizen of Gatford, now she was not. Now she was decidedly unwelcome. Poor Magda. I say that in her behalf—for that period of time. Now…

From there on, she kept my clothes as clean and neat as practical. When they began to look their age and fray, she reworked Edward’s clothes. Fortunately, he and I were constructed similarly, so any alterations were minimal.

And we conversed. As the weeks turned into one month, then two. We conversed more each day. Magda “opened up,” as they say—as much mentally as physically. (Sorry about that.) She told me she was “not legitimate,” as they, also, say; the dumbbells. She was the “love child” of Tollef Nielsen—Norwegian-English. She grew up in Central England. Her father was kind to her, her mother otherwise. The absolute opposite of my rearing, I told her. She became intrigued with Wicca when she was in pre-college school. She never went to college. Thrown out of the house (figuratively speaking), she moved off on her own, ending up in Gatford, met Jerry Variel, and married him, gave birth to Edward. I’ve already told you the rest. Her interest in Wicca rebloomed, providing her need for comfort, which brings you to the present. The present of then, not now. Does that make sense? Let’s hope so.

More on our daily conversations.

I described—as best I could—the night attacks on me. The physical exhaustion. The mental washout. The inability to move. The shadows. The voices. The hag assault.

“And I put out every protection Joe told me to use,” I insisted. “The flower buds—what was left of them. The cast-iron skillet. The nail in my pocket. The bottled ashes in the windows and air opening on the second floor. But none of them worked. That’s why I—” I broke off, unable to say it.

“Why you thought I did it,” Magda finished for me.

“Yes,” I admitted.

“Alex,” she said, “darling. What you don’t understand is this: All right, I admit it’s curious that your protections didn’t help. That’s a separate matter. But your description of what you went through was very little [little? I thought, reacting angrily] to what you would have experienced from a genuine witch attack. Are you listening?”

“Yes,” I said, not convincingly.

“You look as though your mind is elsewhere,” she said.

Touché, I thought. Trapped. My mind was elsewhere. Caught in a limbo between attention and doubting. What exactly was she saying? “I’m sorry,” I muttered.

“What I’m saying,” she went on (was she sponging up my thoughts now?), “is that, if it had been me—and you know now why it could not have been.” I know? came the thought. Well, yes. I did. The baby. “The attack effects would have been far more severe. You would have been more than immobilized and hearing voices—that’s faerie stuff. (Faerie stuff? I questioned.) Your abdominal pains—I assume you had them—would have been so intense, they would have made you scream in agony. Your neck would have suffered terrible, painful spasms. Your kidneys would suffer. You would be experiencing an epileptic fit, your legs and arms convulsing helplessly. You would have felt some invisible force pressing down on your chest, you would have become convinced that you were going to die. Your bedroom—or whatever you call it—would have been filled with a hideous stench, so awful that, combined with the weight on your chest, you would have been certain that you were unable to breathe. All that time, you would have heard loud footsteps in your room and yet been unable to see anything, although you would have been sure that something was in the room with you. Then you would have been conscious of some invisible entity leaning over you, whispering terrible obscenities in your ear. Your little faerie protections would be useless.”

“Even with a cat?” I asked. Why I felt inclined to josh at that moment, I had no idea.

Magda smiled. A sympathetic smile. I guess she knew better than I did. My joshing was not an attempt to lighten the moment but no more than nervous reaction. “Even with a cat.” She allowed my words to contain some acceptable point.

“Do you understand what I just told you?” she asked then.

Did I have a sensible response? “Yes,” I said, “except for two things: Can a faerie do all these things? And, if they do have such power, are all the protections Joe told me about of no effect at all?”

“I think that the little people—some of them, anyway—may have far more black magic power than I’ve given them credit for.” Magda said, “This girl—what’s her name? [You know her name! my mind exploded.] Oh, yes, Ruthana. She must have been extremely drawn to you. No wonder. Faeries are known to be fascinated with human beings. They love to learn all about us. So, when you didn’t go back to her…”

“But she led me out of the woods,” I said, still uncertain about that.

“She must have been so sure of her control over you that she felt she could afford that,” Magda said.

“Afford?” I said, pettish now. “Am I a piece of furniture?” Eighteen-year-old logic.

“No, you’re a beautiful young man,” she said.

“Beautiful?” I snapped, “Come on.”

And yet I knew I was. Give me my due. Have I even mentioned it till now? No, I’ve never “utilized” my looks. Well, now I’d be stupid to try. But then? Despite my snapping rejoinder, I knew that Magda was right. And, fully, expected her to embellish the point. Which she did.

“You know you are,” she said. Was that an impish smile? It was. “Do you think I would have taken you to my bed if you looked like Mr. Hyde?”

I had to smile at that. But with the utter lack of timing I possessed at that age, I said, “I thought you wanted a son.”

Incorrect. Pall spreading. Magda looked disturbed. “Is that what you really think?” she asked.

I knew (instantly; at least I was sensitive enough for that) that I had misspoken. Although I knew that what I had said was, basically, true, I also knew it was misguidedly hurtful. So, once again, I apologized. (I did a lot of that, in those days.) “I’m sorry, Magda,” I told her. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

I didn’t wait for her forgiveness. Maybe I assumed it would be forthcoming. “Something else,” I went on. “You said black magic. Are you saying that Ruthana was using black magic against me?”

She didn’t answer at first. Was she still upset about my remark?

I guess she was. “Do you really think I brought you into my house because I wanted a son?”

Yes, I do, my brain responded, devoid of hesitation. Or grace. I think you wanted another Edward.

“No,” I lied. Hoping, to God, that she took it for the truth. My brain emerged with a mollifying addition. “I know how much you miss Edward. I just wish I could replace him.”

That did it. Mercifully. Her features softened, and she said, “I do miss him. Terribly. But I have never thought of you as a substitute son.” Another impish smile. If she had been a man, I would have termed it a wicked grin. “I had no interest in taking my son to bed with me,” she said. A few moments of silence before she continued. “Black magic? She must know about it. Obviously she practices it. How else explain those attacks?”

“What is it?” I asked. I had a damnable time trying to visualize that angelic-faced creature involved in manipulating dark forces. But Magda was right: How else explain those attacks?

At which point, flashing across my mind—harshly contradicting her denial of any intention of bringing Edward to her bed—was her profane injunction to me while we were coupling. No interest indeed! Yet more confusing inconsistencies in my mind. How was I to deal with them? I simply did not know.

Chapter Twenty

At this point in our conversation, Magda—who seemed to have recouped the stability of her nature—began to explain the nature of black magic. As I surmised (pretentious word, that; well, I probably have become at least semi-pretentious in my old age), black magic was, fundamentally, the manipulation of dark otherworldly forces for some, most likely, devious purpose. The Wicca belief (they do utilize black magic, Magda told me) was, not for harmful purposes but good, positive. Otherwise the preparations were pretty much the same, arcane rituals marked by the use of mystical symbols—on their costumes, on the utilized environment—and chants invoking the presence of whatever forces were judged to be desired for the good (or bad) intention.

For instance, in the negative black magic, a feeling of hatred (for whatever reason—jealousy, envy, et al) resulted in an evil elemental (whatever they may be) to be dispatched, hover above, then attack the victim in whatever weak spot the victim might possess. As long as the attack persists—and the Sender must be cautious about that—the victim will suffer protracted distress if not demise (distress—demise; not bad A.B.). The Left-Hand Path, it’s called.

The drawback is that the attack will evoke no result on the targeted victim if that person (he or she) hasn’t the sort of character vulnerability to provide enough open flaws in which the elemental can make itself at home.

The very existence of these evil elementals, Magda pointed out, engenders the possibility that—without the assistance of black magic—they can prey on victims for their own malevolent reasons. Such attacks may consist of nightmares (dream variety), hallucinations, paralysis, grisly manifestations—blood, slime, and the like—extreme cold, et cetera, et cetera.

“And you think Ruthana has the power to do all these things?” I asked. In genuine pain.

“I’m convinced that she has,” Magda answered.

“Dear God.” My eyes were tearing. I really was in pain.

To consider that a sweet-faced angel like her could, willfully, consort with evil elementals and do all these terrible things to me was agonizing.

Magda took me in her arms; she had forgiven my remark, I decided. She kissed me on the cheek. “I know,” she told me softly, “faeries can be very dangerous. I’m a witch (she said it so casually now), and I have to use as much caution with them as anyone does. I can summon the powers they have, I know how to banish them from my home and even to destroy them if I must. Still…”

“You’d destroy Ruthana?” I couldn’t accept it.

“If I must,” she said. Seeing my expression as I drew away from her, she added, “I won’t, of course. Unless it was to protect you. And you’re safe as long as you’re with me.”

I put my arms around her now. I did feel safe in her renewed embrace. The thought that, despite her enchanting manner, Ruthana was a powerful—and menacing—being chilled me. Magda instructed me to lie down and try to physically relax myself. Breathe slowly and evenly, visualizing each inhalation as drawing in a flow of energy from my feet to the top of my head. Imagine that energy gaining in strength as it streamed through my body. Finally, visualize a sphere of white light floating over my head and trust that divine love was protecting me.

While on the subject, to my surprise, she told me that my remark had disturbed her because her loss of Edward still pained her deeply. As a matter of fact, she confessed, she’d tried to “bring him back” through the use of black magic.

Perhaps because her motive was confused, a mixture of positive and negative, the result was dreadful. An image of Edward, a white-faced corpse, his body half gone, the remainder drenched with blood.

“It was the most horrible moment of my life,” Magda told me. “A perfect example of the danger of misusing black magic. Don’t ever try, Alex. For God’s sake, don’t ever try.”

“I won’t,” I said. As though I’d even thought of it.

“And please—please,” she said, “don’t think for a moment that it was ever my intention to replace Edward with you. It simply isn’t true.”

I had to believe her. Could such pained emotion be feigned?

I still wasn’t sure.

Magda consolidated her position in my life by introducing me to scrying.

When I mentioned Veronica several times, Magda asked me if I wanted to see her.

“She’s alive?” I asked. Naïvely, of course.

“Somewhere,” Magda said. “Somewhere. In the spirit world.”

“So—” I didn’t really understand. “Are we going to have a—séance?” I guess I knew the word at the time. Maybe I expressed it in another way. I don’t remember.

“No,” said Magda with a smile, “we’ll use scrying.”

Scrying is a method by which hoped-for images may be seen in a mirror. Any kind of mirror is usable, though round hand mirrors work best. Full-size mirrors, Magda informed me, are of use only if the mirror is being used as a doorway into the astral world. (I did not intend such.)

Mirrors, Magda explained, are usually linked to the moon. They are backed with silver, the so-called lunar metal. The glass front is a “lunar substance,” frames are best in silver. The round shape resembles the full moon. None of which was of any interest to me. I listened patiently to Magda’s descriptions, waiting to hear about my seeing Veronica again. “You did love your sister,” Magda tested.

“We loved each other very much,” I answered, remembering how gentle and kind Veronica was. “Good,” said Magda. “That’s important.”

Magda had purchased her mirror in a Gatford antique shop. It was an old cosmetic mirror, slightly tarnished, with a silver frame. She took it from a cabinet in her study. The first night of the experiment, she put it outside so that the surface would reflect the light of the moon. She then wrapped it in black velvet, black being a lunar color, she said. Did I mention (no, I forgot, old age again) that the back of the mirror was painted black? This was so that the mirror would not reflect anything, distracting the eyes. That way the viewer would be, as it were, gazing into a black pool, making it easier to “see things,” as Magda put it. Scrying regulations, I figured. I was sure I’d “see nothing” but I went along with it nonetheless, my yearning to see Veronica outweighing any dubious frame of mind.

The night arrived for my scrying test. In spite of my continuing doubts, I felt uneasy, with no idea of what exactly was going to take place.

Before I started, Magda gave me the handled mirror and told me to hold it carefully, noting whether it brought on any intuitive responses in me. In brief, did the mirror “speak” to me? When Magda said that, I felt inclined to snicker. I held the mirror up to my right ear and pretended to listen. “Not a word,” I said.

Magda frowned. “Are you going to take this seriously?” she asked. “If not, we’re wasting time.”

I winced at that. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I really do want to see my sister.”

“Very well, then,” she said. “Place the mirror on the table. [We were in the kitchen.] Lay it flat and look into it steadily, imagining that you’re looking through its surface, deep into the darkness. Concentrate your mind on the blackness, focusing your thoughts on the astral world where Veronica is. Stare into the darkness and your thoughts.”

I did what Magda told me. Losing track of everything but the blackness in the mirror, the total darkness. Nothing else. Minutes went by. “Keep looking,” Magda said quietly. “Stare into the darkness. See nothing but the darkness and your thoughts about Veronica.” I sensed, in the back of my mind, that she was hypnotizing me and wondered fleetingly if it was her hypnosis that was going to make me see Veronica. Then, all was lost in the blackness, my need to see Veronica—and Magda’s soothing murmur.

I don’t know how much time passed before anything happened. Maybe an hour. Maybe two. There was no way to register passing time.

Then, suddenly (and I do mean suddenly) the mirror brightened to a light gray, and colors began flashing across its surface. The abrupt transition made me catch my breath.

“What is it?” asked the voice; I’d forgotten who it was.

“Colors,” I muttered.

“In clouds?”

“More like moving shadows.”

“Moving water?”

“Moving shadows,” I repeated, getting pettish.

“What colors?”

“Blue. Purple. Green. Pink.”

“Which way are they moving?” asked the voice.

“Left to right,” I answered.

“Is one of them persisting?”

Persisting? I thought. Oh, yes. Returning again and again. I twisted restlessly on the chair.

“Are you uncomfortable?” inquired the voice.

I knew then it was Magda. “Yes,” I told her, “nervous.”

“Visualize white light around you,” she told me.

I tried. It didn’t work.

“Color?” Magda insisted.

“Red,” I said.

“That’s anger,” she replied. So patiently, it galled me.

“That’s enough,” I declared. The mirror went blank in that instant. Magda made a sound of disappointment. “You’d gone so far,” she said.

I sat up straight. Without realizing it, I had been bending over, my face inches from the mirror. I looked at Magda, I’m afraid accusingly. “I’m sorry,” I said. I wasn’t.

Clouds, or moving shadows, moving water, whatever, traveling from left to right signified the approach of spirits, she told me. If only I had stayed with it…

That especially I didn’t want to hear. Or that the movement of the shadows in the opposite direction—which they were beginning to do when I broke off—meant the withdrawal of spirits.

As for the colors (I barely listened to her as she recounted their meaning) they were yellow, willfulness; orange, indignation; purple, brooding, obsession; and, of course, red, anger. I’m surprised I didn’t see a rainbow of those colors. I’d become increasingly rattled and irritable.

As for the clouds—in my case, the shadows—forming on the left meant manifestations; on the right, spiritual insights; rising, revelations; falling, negation; I’ve already told you about the left to right and vice versa.

While I should have asked questions during observations of the moving shadows, I might have gleaned some desired information before reaching the vision stage. During the questions, the clouds (the shadows) would likely have changed direction. In my case, dropping like lead balloons.

I gave up scrying after one more night’s attempt. I’d never see Veronica again, it became obvious. The realization (heartbreaking to me) embittered my persona toward Magda for more than a week. To her everlasting credit, she did not retaliate. I know now that she could have. Easily.

Actually, on my second scrying venture, I thought I did see Veronica. Not her, but an aged, yellowing photograph of her. Which, as I tried to see more distinctly, seemed to alter to an image of (I was stunned by the sight) Ruthana. When that occurred, I gasped and drew up sharply from the blanking mirror. With the abrupt decision, angry now, never to try scrying again. I never told Magda what I thought I saw.

She alienated me further by explaining additional information about scrying. Spirits may engage directly with the scryer. Never attempt to converse with them. Not audibly, at any rate. Thoughts are as “audible” to them as spoken words.

The notion that I might not only have seen Veronica but also communicated with her—in whatever netherworld she now resided—came close to maddening me. Not at myself, of course (I was eighteen, remember), but at Magda. More than that, at life in general. Society. Culture. The world and its hateful citizens. (I’ve told you more than once: I really wasn’t thinking straight.) Magda gave an extra twist to the blade in my heart telling me that evidently I had attained the first degree—seeing shadows (aka clouds). Only those in the fourth degree would be capable of seeing detailed visions of spirits; and, even those, irregularly. It took a fifth degree to summon visions at will; the sixth degree enabled the scryer to engage the visions as a participating actor. I felt great about that sarcasm.

As supplemental evidence of my muddled thinking, that night as I lay in bed beside my might-as-well-be-called bride, I went over and over my cerebral lamentations about the world at large. The world “out there” in all its rotten glory.

Which world was real? The world I was presently in—lying naked beside a witch? Or the world I’d been in from birth up to and including my time in the French trench; now, that was reality, horrible reality. The months in the trench. That certainly seemed real enough—the mud, the explosions, the gore, the rats, the endless stench. Wasn’t that reality?

It certainly seemed to be in contrast with the gold lump becoming a lump of gray dust. My two experiences in the woods. Ruthana. Magda. The miraculous healing. The God-awful manuscript. The hideous night attacks. Was all that madness reality? It certainly seemed to be so at the time.

That lumped-together thinking did nothing for my sleep. Instead, I began to think about the world at large. Still embroiled in war. Thank whatever stars were in my favor (precious few, I imagine) that I had no knowledge of WWII as I now have. If it had even occurred to me that the damned Boche—becoming damned Nazis—were going to rise again after losing WWI—and threaten the world once more—not to mention the ghastly Holocaust—I would have gotten out of bed and hanged myself. Or, at the very least, opened a few veins and quietly bled to death.

I didn’t know, thank God. So I was merely miserable, stressed out by my experiences in ye trench. I tried to rationalize it away but with limited (none) success. Maybe Magda could summon up some out-of-this-world forces and heal my stress. I’d be embarrassed to ask. The leg and hip wound—that was visibly acceptable. Stress? Sorry. Doesn’t show.

For a while I amused myself—maybe “bemused” would be more accurate—with memories of the rat wars we enjoyed (we did enjoy them, God help us) in the trenches. We took trips to connecting trenches for more rats in the event that our immediate supply ran out. We threw the rats at each other (yes!), laughing like crazy all the time (we were crazy), or if we could lay our hands on a pistol, stealing it or confiscating it from the body of a killed officer, we would shoot the rats. Did I already tell you that? I may have. And that the rats exploded “nicely” when struck? Probably did.

Despite my hours of brooding wakefulness, I must, eventually, have slipped off into some kind of REM doze. Because, immediately, I dreamt.

About Ruthana.

It didn’t seem to be a dream. It was as though she stood in front of me emblazoned in a dazzling white light. She was crying. Her lips were moving. No sound. I tried to understand what she was saying. Finally I got the words.

“Please. Come back to me. Please. Come back to me.” Again and again. Without sound. As though she couldn’t speak aloud. Or was prevented from speaking the words aloud by some invisible barrier.

Created by Magda; it came to me.

Chapter Twenty-one

How long the light (the dream) persisted, I have no idea. All I remembered was Ruthana’s exquisite face wet with tears that never stopped flowing. Her glorious tear-glistening eyes directed at me. Her lips trembling as she repeated endlessly: “Please come back to me. Please. Come back to me.”

I woke up with a start.

To hear the rustle of Magda’s movement as she awakened. “Are you all right?” she asked in a sleep-thickened voice.

“Yes,” I said.

I felt her hot flesh as she pressed against me. “Good,” she murmured. I winced as she lay a warm (it felt heavy) arm over me. At one time, when she did that, I would have felt protected. Then, it only disturbed me. Did she know about my dream? I didn’t see how she could have. But she had so many powers. About most of which I knew nothing. I waited to see if she mentioned it. If she did, my stress level would have doubled.

She didn’t.

I brought up the subject the following morning at breakfast. Not with regard to Ruthana, of course. More having to do with Magda’s protection of me—an approach I knew was workable.

“Magda,” I began, broaching the question cleverly (I thought, with all the egotism of the standard teenager), “since you live so close to the woods, how do you protect yourself from them? Or do they just leave you alone because—” I broke off, realizing, with dashed egotism conviction, that I’d gone too far.

“Because I’m a witch?” Magda said. Neither kindly nor accusingly. A statement of fact. Which I could, scarcely, deny.

She told me that faeries disliked—were offended and even pained—by sudden noises. Accordingly, she extended (microscopic) threads across her property. She answered my question for me. The obvious question being, How come I didn’t bump into those threads? Because, she explained, they are astral threads, invisible to mortal flesh but not to faeries. So when the faeries come in contact with the threads—bing, bang, boom! Bells “activate” and—ergo—the little people are dismissed forthwith. Had any of those people tested the threads? Years ago. They’d been dismissed. Forthwith. Doesn’t that mean “right away”? I hope so.

Beyond that, the running water in front of her entry acted as a deterrent, diffusing their power. Why, I couldn’t tell you, since faeries—notably Ruthana—seemed to relish running water. Maybe only in the woods.

Of course, if the water didn’t do the job, the faeries might elect to enter through (the door, no) the walls. They had that power, being largely astral themselves. (I really did a heap of wondering on that.) The power was stymied by the installation of malefic herb pouches in each window. I hadn’t noticed them, although I’d been conscious of an enduring odor in the house—not terribly offensive to me, but definitely ever-present.

Using some form of ritual, Magda had also created what she called a vortex of defensive energy above the house. This so-called cone of power, she explained, when created over the defendant’s head (most likely the witch’s), gave rise to the myth about the witch’s coned hat. Interesting.

All these protections being in effect, it was little wonder that the strange image of Ruthana was unable to speak aloud. It was a miracle that Ruthana was able to appear at all. She must have unusual powers, too, I thought.

None of which assuaged (there I go again) my discomfort at the entire occurrence. I tried to maintain my “general” interest and involvement in the topic of faerie security, but it wasn’t easy. When Magda had completed her discourse on the subject, I even tried to make a joke. “Now I know,” I said, “why there are no bugs in the garden.”

She laughed at my lame attempt to produce humor, and the moment passed. Leaving me hopelessly ensconced (look it up yourself) in my congealed (that, too) depression. How could I go on this way? Torn between my limited acceptance of Magda and my everlasting enchantment with Ruthana. Now I’m back to combos again! Forgive me. This is a disturbing section of my account to be immersed in.

My emotional turmoil ended—with a bang—a few days later.

I was out walking on the path; Magda now allowed it, apparently at peace with my behavior toward her. Which surprised me, since I felt that my behavior was, to say the least, questionable. I, of course, underestimated her activity. I think, now (God knows I didn’t have the wit then), that she knew, all the time, what was stirring in my eighteen-year-old brain and acted accordingly. Which meant, I now believe, lengthen the unseen leash and see what the doggie does. Unkind, I guess. She didn’t think of me as a pet (I don’t think), but she knew about Ruthana now and how Ruthana had affected me. So… extend the leash and see what happens.

Which found me strolling unaware along the path. Uneasily—not because I thought, for a moment, that Magda was keeping an eye on me. Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe I’m overestimating her skill at detecting the significance of my behavior. Still, there were the woods themselves. Ruthana was in there, and up to that moment, I had no idea of (1) how powerful her psychic abilities really were, and (2) was she still, as she had claimed, in love with me and, because I had unknowingly betrayed her, now in hate with me? You can see that my emotional turmoil was still very much intact.

At what point in my thought-muddled walk it began, I do not recall. It probably came on me gradually, step by step. A sensation of being drawn into the woods.

At first, I gave it little credence, thinking—if I was capable of thinking at all—that the minor physical compulsion was a psychological effect, not actual.

I was wrong. By the time I tried, once more, to ignore the compulsion, it was too powerful to ignore. Too impossible to resist. My body was being drawn inexorably into the woods. The more I struggled against it, the stronger it became. For a moment or two, I conjectured (dazedly) that it was being caused by Magda. But why? I argued—thought. Why force me to encounter Ruthana? Then again, it wasn’t that at all. Encounter Ruthana? Why do that? More likely encounter some malevolent faerie who would—?

No! I resisted that with all my might, which was, I tell you, not much at that point. For, while I was conjecturing pointlessly, the drawing went on, unabated. I swear it was as though some invisible entity had me tightly in its grip and was pulling me into the woods. Where I, now, was being dragged (but gently) through the grass and around the bushes and tree trunks.

At that point, I gave up resisting. The drawing was too careful. If Magda was behind it, would it be so? I didn’t think it. It had to be Ruthana. But why? To punish me? Or to reaffirm her love? I could not wash from my brain the memory of her in the white light, weeping, begging me to back to her.

The answer came in short order. Standing in a clearing ahead of me, Ruthana was waiting, arms outstretched to embrace me.

Then we were holding each other—her with passionate ardor, me with half-uncertain caution.

The other half was grateful joy.

“I’m sorry I did this to you,” she murmured. “I just had to see you.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t come back,” I murmured back. “I couldn’t.” It was a lie, I knew. But I couldn’t tell her the truth. That returning was not available to me because of the attacks on me.

“It’s all right,” she said. “You’re back now, that’s all that matters.”

I had to know. The question was festering in my mind.

The opportunity to ask was delayed as Ruthana drew back from her embrace and took me by the hand. Led me through the woods to near the waterfall where I had first seen her. I noticed then—how strange that it didn’t seem consequential to notice it immediately—that she was nude. As she had been in the beginning. Never in my life had nudity seemed so innocent.

We reached the rock on which we’d sat originally, and she seated me on it, then instantly perched her warmth on my lap and, without a word, kissed me. So lingeringly that my manhood (the only aspect of it I possessed at my age) rose to the occasion.

Did it bother Ruthana? She laughed softly. (Dare I describe it as a giggle; it was close to that.) “You’re ready to love,” she said with a childlike smile. Then she gazed at me intently. “Alex,” she said, “I love you so. If you want to love, I won’t stop you.”

Physically, I wanted to—very much. But my brain intervened. “Ruthana,” I said.

“Yes, my dearest darling,” she replied. Oh, God, I thought. How could I ask now?

But I had to. “Did you… attack me?”

She looked genuinely confused. “Attack you?” she asked.

I girded my mental loins and told her about the attacks. Leaving no detail undescribed. As I did, I saw her expression alter from confusion to horror—to, finally, defensive pain.

“Did you really think I did that to you?” she asked, her tone one of gentle protest. “Do you really believe I would ever do that to you?”

She was crying, then. Sobbing as though heartbroken. And I was convinced, at that moment, that Magda had initiated the attacks. And lied to me, almost convincing me that Ruthana, not she, was responsible.

I tried to kiss away Ruthana’s flowing tears. “Don’t cry,” I said, (My love for her returned in force.) “I didn’t want to believe it. I tried to, but I couldn’t. Magda—”

“Magda,” she broke in. It was the first time I heard anything but softness in her voice. She sounded angrily contemptuous now. “That terrible witch. How could she do those awful things to you? Then make you believe I was the one who did them? Do you still believe it?”

“No, my darling,” I assured her. It was surprising how simple it was to express my feeling toward her. “I love you very much.”

The crying ceased. I drew a handkerchief from my shirt pocket (wincing as I pictured Magda washing, then ironing it) and dabbed, as carefully as I could, at Ruthana’s lustrous eyes. She was smiling again, my words had reassured her. Magda never seemed that immediately appeased. “Thank you, Alex,” Ruthana whispered. “Thank you. I love you, too. But you know that.”

She said she failed to understand how Magda could have acted (reacted, I thought) that way. Didn’t she realize that such attacks were unwarranted? (My word, not Ruthana’s.) I said I didn’t understand either. There was a lot I didn’t understand about Magda. “That’s because she’s a witch,” Ruthana told me. “No one understands what witches think.”

“That’s for sure,” I said. I wasn’t sure at all.

I shifted my arms. It was difficult to clasp her because of her size. She sensed it immediately. “What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I lied. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

“I know what it is,” she said. “Wait.”

Jumping (I mean jumping) off my lap. She darted (I mean darted) behind a tree. I wondered what she was doing. Did she have to go to the bathroom? I thought impolitely.

It wasn’t that. In a few moments—less than half a minute, I’ll guess—she reappeared.

Full size.

I know my mouth fell open. So did my brain. How did this miracle occur?

She ran (ran now, not darted) back to me and plunked herself on my lap. I think I said, “Oof!” at the extra weight. Ruthana laughed delightedly. I drew in an obvious breath. Which delighted her even more. She kissed me on the cheek. If there is such a thing as a happy kiss, that was it.

“How did you do that?” I asked. Still a mite breathless.

“We can all do that,” she said.

“For how long?” I asked, my voice a trifle wheezy.

“As long as we want,” she said, as though the answer were perfectly clear. “My brother did it—I mean my stepbrother.”

“He did,” I said, confirming information to myself.

“Yes,” she replied.

“For how long?” I asked. I wanted to know. I didn’t like the idea of her shifting without control.

Now her expression darkened. Had I asked the wrong thing?

“Until he died,” she answered quietly.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. But, still more curious, added, “Why did he do it? Change size, I mean?”

Ruthana sighed deeply. “So he could go to war,” she told me.

A glimmer of light in the unknowing shadows of my brain.

“He wanted to defend our country,” she said. “We told him that the Middle Kingdom was our country, but he wouldn’t listen.”

A glimmer above a glimmer. Like Gilly, it appeared she had the same distaste (I can’t describe it as the same hatred) for the human race.

I cut to the chase, as they say. “Was his name Harold?” I asked.

“No,” she answered, “Haral.”

“Oh,” I said. Curiosity unrelieved.

“He changed it to Harold,” she said. Then, “Why do you ask?”

“I knew him,” I said. “I was in the trenches with him.”

When I said that, her eyes lit up. I swear to God that’s what they did. For that matter, her entire face lit up. No better way to describe it. “You did!?” she said. Exultantly. No better way to describe that either.

I told her everything I could remember. How friendly Harold had been. How informative on military matters. How he taught me British slang.

“What’s that?” Ruthana asked. Brightly curious.

I told her, remembering as many Brit words as I could. “Beer and skittles”—not easy. “Bob’s your uncle”—that’s it. “Pigs might fly!”—yeah, sure, sarcastically. That one evoked a peal of delighted laughter from Ruthana. But, finally, she said, “He must have been joking with you—and himself—because we never talk like that. It’s funny, though. Harold was always funny.” That darkening expression again. “Except when he deserted our country for England.”

“Yes.” Lacking further knowledge, I had to agree with her.

That sigh again. Incredibly deep. “Were you—” She hesitated, then went on. “—with him when he—died?”

I avoided any gory detail, describing only the charm of his smile and his final words to me, “When you go to Gatford…”

“I’m so glad he said that,” I told her (from the heart). “I’m so grateful that I came to Gatford. And met you.”

“Oh, Alex,” she murmured, kissed me tenderly on the lips. “I’m so grateful that you came, too. To me.” She looked worried then. “You don’t still think I did those awful things, do you? I swear, on my life, that I would never do a thing to hurt you.” Another kiss. I hugged her tightly. So much so that she murmured, “Ooh.”

“I’m sorry,” I apologized, “I just want to hold you close.”

“Alex, Alex.” A rain of kisses. On my lips, my chin, my cheeks, my eyes, my forehead. Well, everywhere available for kisses. I enjoyed each one.

I asked her then about the gold lump. Told her how it had become a pile of gray dust.

“You didn’t get it in your eyes, did you?” she asked. It seemed an odd question.

“No,” I said, “why?”

“It could have blinded you,” she told me. “Even killed you if you’d breathed it in.”

I remembered Mr. Brean’s abrupt demise and wondered it that was the cause. No answer to that. I’d have to accept Ruthana’s word on it.

“The gold,” I said, “where did it come from?”

“Us,” she answered simply. “We can do that. My stepfather did it and sent it to Haral—Harold, as you called him.”

“And it turned into dust?”

“It had to when a human took it,” she said.

“I’m human,” I said. “It didn’t turn into dust when I had it.”

A strange response to that. “You’re not completely human, then,” she said. Again, simply. Nothing portentous.

The simplicity of her reply staggered me.

“Did Haral—Harold—give it to you?” she asked.

“In a way,” I answered, going on to describe the magical circumstance of the gold lump appearing in my duffel bag. My god, but life was magical those days!

“Well. That explains it, then,” Ruthana said. “He wanted you to have it. That protected it from—” She failed to come up with the word.

“Dissolution?” I suggested.

She laughed. “If I knew what that means,” she said.

“Another word for turning into dust,” I told her.

“Oh.” She smiled. “You’re so smart, Alex.”

“No, I’m not,” I said. “I just read [pronouncing it as a rhyme with ‘red’] a lot.”

“You must see our books,” she said.

“I’m dying to,” I told her.

“Dying?” she said. Much concerned.

“Just an expression,” I said. Seeing the look of concern remaining, I added, “A way of speaking.” Her look continued, then abated as she noted the comforting tone of my voice.

“Oh,” she said. “You worried me. To say ‘dying.’ I don’t like to think of that. You dying? It would end my life.”

“Oh, Ruthana,” I could hardly speak, I was so in love with her. I’d thought Veronica was sweet. Compared to Ruthana, she was one of Dracula’s wives. The comparison struck me later; I didn’t read the novel until Arthur Black was under way.

We kissed and kissed. Do I sound romantically absurd? Can’t help it. That’s the way it happened. Endless kisses. Only the sound of our endless osculation. Other than the birds and breeze in the trees. Plus the distant splashing of the waterfall. Too bad I couldn’t say “the birds and the bees in the trees.” A. Black would have enjoyed a chuckle at that. But Alexander White was bereft of critical acumen. Eighteen years old, criminally (perhaps a bit too accusatory an adjective) naïve, A. White lost in a dream world of love. Only his organ showed any sign of reality recognition. (Good combo there.) Recognition exaggerated as Ruthana helped me off with my clothes.

Ruthana, accustomed to living twenty-four hours a day in this dream world, knew what was occurring in my nether regions. She smiled at me with innocent pleasure. “You want to love,” she observed. Not too difficult an observation, since my organ was halfway to the moon.

“I do,” I said. Throatily.

“I’m yours to love,” she murmured. Then, with a quick kiss on my lips, said, “But first.”

First? I thought. What first? Did I need to wash myself? I had no rubberized protection with me. The last of those was still in France. What then?

Ruthana stood, smiling impishly at the turgid state of my groin. Then, to my surprise, told me, “I want you to meet Gilly.”

Oh, God, I thought. My organ—up till that moment as hard as a ramrod, quickly lost rigidity, much to Ruthana’s amusement. “I’m sorry,” she said with another smile. “We can restore it when needed.” I hadn’t realized her sense of humor was droll.

“Okay,” I said. Regretfully now. “But why do I need to meet Gilly?”

“If you’re to stay,” she said.

“Stay?” I reacted. Without thinking.

“Don’t you want to?” she asked, concerned again. “Don’t you want to live with me?”

The thought excited and alarmed me at the same time. “Yes, of course, I do,” I told her. And meant it. “But I’m not…”

“One of us?” she said, not asking; telling.

“Yes,” I said. (My penis was completely flaccid by now.) “I thought I could before. When you said I wasn’t completely human.”

“You’re not,” she told me.

“But you said when Harold—Haral—gave the gold lump to me, that was why it didn’t turn into dust.”

“That’s right,” she said.

“Well, then.” I didn’t get it, but I didn’t want to argue with her.

“Don’t worry,” she said.

“But I do,” I went on. “I want to stay with you, very much. But I don’t see how.”

“We can change you,” she said.

Now I was really set back on my brain heels. Change me? What on earth did that mean?

“We’ll talk about it later,” she said. Another quick kiss. She said then, “I’ll send for Gilly.”

Send for him? “You know where he is?” I asked.

“I’ll send for him,” she said, as though case closed. It didn’t matter where he was. She’d send for him. Another scrap of evidence. Ruthana had powers. Change me. Send for Gilly. Period. Whoa.

She turned and looked into the distant woods. I saw no particular alteration in her face. No squinted eyes, no tightened lips, no lines or ridges on her brow. Just… looking into the woods. Without me noticing any physical tensing, “sending” for her brother. Correction. Stepbrother. I wondered, for several seconds, whether she had any family of her own.

It didn’t take long. I was primed for an elephant charge through a bamboo forest. Not a sound. He didn’t even approach us from a distance. Abruptly, he was there. Had he just materialized in the air? I couldn’t tell. It happened too fast. He might have—as Ruthana did—darted up to us from the woods. On the other hand, he might just have materialized in front of us. Magic was becoming matter-of-fact to me. By then, I could believe—and accept—anything at all.

What did Gilly look like? Well, he was solid, not, as Magda had suggested, imaginary. Dressed in green, Ruthana’s height. Nowhere as attractive as Ruthana. She was stunningly beautiful. He was—how shall I put it?—acceptably masculine. Black-haired (very thick) and black-eyed, his features regular though undistinguished. It was his expression that set him apart.

Mean.

Clearly, he had no regard for me—unless it was hatred. (His expression chilled me.) He seemed ready to pounce on me at a moment’s notice, prepared to throttle me fatally.

But instead, he glared at Ruthana. Eyed her up and down. Incestually? I thought, tensing. I couldn’t very well box him, naked. But no, it was with disgust, contempt. Because I was naked? No doubt. Why hadn’t Ruthana had me dress first?

Gilly’s first words. “Changed yourself for this?”

“I want you to leave him alone,” she said. No plea. An order.

Was that a faerie snicker? It sounded more a snort. “Leave him alone?” he said. Utterly disdainful—even arrogant.

“Leave him alone,” she said. Her tone was firm and unafraid.

An eye duel then. If flames had been exchanged between them, I would not have been surprised. It was a tournament between equal enemies, or were they equal? No. Because Gilly backed off, lowering his glowering gaze. No doubt of it. He was, at least, unable to contest Ruthana. At most, afraid of her. And she loved me? This powerhouse faerie? Unbelievable. Yet I had to believe it.

“Now I want you to shake his hand,” Ruthana said. A calm, but definite, command.

“I will not,” Gilly said. No, snarled. If he had shape-shifted to a wolf, I swear I would not have been taken back. Terrified but not surprised.

“Then go,” Ruthana said, “and the gods protect you if you ever hurt him.”

Gilly looked at her with hatred. “Just stay out of my way,” he told her. “Or you die.”

With that, he was gone. Dematerialized. I knew it now. Could Ruthana do the same? I felt sure she could. And the prospect of staying with her malevolent stepbrother lurking in the background, I must say, unnerved me.

Ruthana saw my obvious distress and came over, put her arms around me. And, in an instant, powerhouse Ruthana had been revived as my loving angel. Only for a moment did I question my sanity in trusting her so completely. Then Mr. Manhood reasserted his (uncontrollable) upstanding presence.

Before the obvious occurred, though, a smidgen of rationality remained with me, and I said to Ruthana, “Will you tell me something?”

“Of course, my love,” she said. I felt grateful that she didn’t call me “darling,” as Magda had.

“You spoke about—changing me,” I said. “How?”

“In size only,” she answered. “I have to, Alex. I don’t like being human. I’m not used to it. It makes me unhappy.”

“So you’ll make me smaller,” I said.

“Yes, we can,” she said. “But only if you’re willing.”

“Oh, I would be,” I said. Then—cautiously—“Would it hurt?”

She laughed. “A little bit,” she said.

I think I winced. “What would I feel like?” I asked.

Another childlike laugh. “Smaller,” she said.

Oh, boy, I thought. Smaller. To remain with Ruthana, I’d have to resemble one of the little people.

In brief, become a faerie.

Chapter Twenty-two

It happened then. The inevitable. Ruthana sat on my lap. I slipped inside her easily. I wondered briefly if that meant she wasn’t a virgin. I didn’t care. I knew that her mind, with regard to me, was virginal. Don’t understand why I knew it. I just did. This was the first time she had had sex this way. With total love. She told me so later.

Her movement was slight. Her breathing quickened—but to such a small degree, that I could barely notice it. Also minimal, the sounds of passion she made were scarcely audible. I was struck by the difference between Magda’s gasping, hissing, and moaning and Ruthana’s delicate arousal. My initial inclination had been to thrust and withdraw determinedly—as I did with Magda. Ruthana’s tranquil approach subdued me, and I realized that animal-like huffing and puffing were unnecessary. We were making love, not lust.

It ended quickly. Virtually motionless, we climaxed together—the only moment I heard an audible “Oh!” from her. Not to mention my pathetic groaning. Ruthana, smiling, kissed me tenderly. I had never known such simple ecstasy. No carnality. No lecherousness.

Heaven.

In several hours, my heaven turned to hell.

It happened this way.

“I have to go back,” I told Ruthana.

Her expression, up until then blissfully secure, tightened into a mask of fear and disappointment. “Alex, why?” she asked.

“I have to say good-bye to her,” I answered.

The disappointment was obliterated by sheer dread. “But it isn’t safe,” she said.

“Is it safe here?” I asked.

“Yes, it is,” she answered. “We can protect you.”

“Gilly, too?” My question was labeled: Distrust.

“Not him,” she said. “He’ll leave you alone. I’ll protect you. So will Garal,” she added quickly. (Garal—Haral—was there a connection?) A look of pleading tensed her face. “Please, Alex. Don’t go back. It isn’t safe.”

I put my arms around her. “You thought I meant to leave you,” I said. I kissed her gently.

“I did,” she said. “But now, I’m frightened. She’s a terrible woman, Alex. A dangerous witch.”

“Well, first of all, I’ll never leave you. Never,” I told her.

“Thank you, love,” she said. “I’d die if you did. But now—”

I stopped her with another kiss. “I have to say good-bye to her, Ruthana. I’m not sure she attacked me.” I put a finger across her lips to stop her protest. “I don’t mean I think you did it. I know you didn’t. Maybe (the notion sprang across my mind) Gilly did. Doesn’t he have the same power as you?” I asked.

“No,” she answered. “Not as much. If he did, he would have attacked everyone in Gatford, he hates them so much. But none of us is capable of such attacks. We wouldn’t even know how to do them. So it couldn’t have been Gilly. Alex, I’m telling you it was the witch. They were witch attacks.”

I was affected twofold. On one side, I was duly impressed by Ruthana. She had never spoken to me at such length. On the second side, I was discouraged that my “inspiration” regarding Gilly was null and void. So it had to be Magda. And here I was planning to go back to her. Momentarily, an image of a fly returning to a spider’s web flitted disconcertingly across my mental eye. I resisted it. I had to return to Magda, bid her a grateful farewell. Dangerous or not, I had to take decent leave of her. She was carrying my child, after all. I felt bad about leaving Magda with the baby, but how could I possibly stay with someone who had used black magic to attack me? I had to end things with Magda. Ruthana didn’t understand. I had to explain.

“Ruthana, let me tell you why I have to go back,” I said. “To say good-bye,” I added quickly, seeing the expression of alarm on her face once more. “She’s been very good to me. She healed me, for heaven’s sake! I had a terrible wound on my right hip and leg; I got it in the trench in France, a shell explosion. Part of me was torn apart; you never saw it, thank God. And she healed it! Maybe she used a witch’s ritual to do it, but she did it, I was completely healed. I’ll always owe her for that.”

“But,” she started.

“Let me finish,” I said. “Magda has been very kind to me for the past few months. She treated me as though she was my mother. [Don’t ask me if I slept with her! my brain pleaded.] She cooked for me, took care of my clothes. We talked. We took long walks together. It was all very pleasant. I never felt in danger. Not for a moment.” I avoided any mention of the manuscript.

“I’m making it sound as though I plan to stay with her,” I reassured her, “that isn’t it at all. It’s just that—very likely—she has no idea what happened to me. I went for a walk and disappeared. She’s probably upset by that. So please. Don’t think, for a second, that I want to leave you. I don’t. Not at all. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” I managed a smile. “I’ll even get small for you.”

My attempted jollity failed to reach her. And I knew I had to tell her. It was wrong for me to keep it from her. Absolutely wrong. “Ruthana,” I started. She gazed at me worriedly, as though she knew I was just about to tell her something awful.

Which I was. “Magda is—” I couldn’t say the word. “—with child.”

She stared at me. Speechless.

“I know I should have told you before,” I said. “I was afraid to.”

“Why?” she asked. So guilessly, I wondered if I’d heard her tone correctly.

“Why?” I asked. It sounded more like a demand, although I didn’t wish it to.

“You think that we didn’t all assume that you and she were—?” Now she couldn’t seem to say the word.

“There was no love involved,” I said. “No, that isn’t true,” I amended, determined that she hear the truth now. “I won’t take back everything I said about her. There was love at first. Magda gave me love. I believed her.” That was true as well. “Later… it was different. I became afraid of her.”

I took her hands in mine. “She had a son who died in the war. She wanted me to replace him.” I gritted my teeth. “In every way,” I said. “Which I did, God help me. I did.” I drew in a feeble, gasping breath… “If you can’t forgive me, I’ll understand. I will. I swear I will.”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she walked away from me! I was astounded. Had I failed the entire explanation? I stood, aghast. Was my return to Magda to be permanent? All sorts of dire possibilities crossed my mind. Magda would never forgive me. She’d know exactly what happened. I’d rue the day. In spades.

Not so. To my amazement, there was Ruthana in front of me again. She was holding a small vial in her hand. She held it out.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Protection,” she said, “if you must go.”

She went on to explain that the vial contained a powder. Shockingly, I discovered, it was the powder that had probably blinded and killed Mr. Brean.

“I don’t want to kill her, Ruthana.” I drew the line. “I just want to say good-bye to her.”

“I don’t want you to kill her,” Ruthana said. “I don’t like killing. But you have to protect yourself. In case—” She hesitated. “—she goes after you,” she finished.

“Ruthana, I don’t think she’ll ‘go after’ me,” I said. “She loves me.” Seeing that expression again, I added, “Well, she said she did. I don’t know.”

Silence then. She continued holding the vial. Reluctantly, I took it, slipping it into my jacket pocket. (I forgot to mention we were dressed by then. We’d remained comfortably nude for—I estimate—more than an hour.)

“I’ll take you out of the woods,” she said.

I shivered. Was she accepting my departure too readily?

I should have known better. Moving close, she wrapped her arms around me, holding tight. “Remember what I said,” she whispered. “If you don’t come back, I’ll die.” I knew she meant it. It was a frightening admonition. Not a warning or a threat. A statement of her love. I had to respect it.

One more fervent kiss, and then we started through the woods, hand in hand. In a short while, unopposed in any way, we reached the path. It was far from the spot where I’d entered the woods. My god, did it all take place today? It seemed much longer.

We held each other for at least a minute. We kissed. “Be careful, my love,” Ruthana said, an audible break in her voice. “Use the powder if you have to.” It sounded as though she meant when you have to. I put aside that possibility and kissed her one last time. “I will come back,” I assured her. “It’s going to be all right.”

Little did I know.

I left her and walked out onto the path. As I started toward Magda’s house, I looked back at the woods. Ruthana was gone. Had she walked away—or vanished as Gilly had? Whatever way she’d disappeared, the sight was unnerving. Did she think—was she convinced—that I’d never return? No way of knowing. But the very possibility was distressing to me. I just realized that the word “distressing” contains the word “stress.” Which is why—no vast discovery—the word implies the presence of stress. Bravo, A. Black! Candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature! Not.

Where was I? Back on the path, returning to my witch’s house. Hansel and Gretel rolled into one. Why can’t I take this more seriously? I was feeling pretty damn serious walking back along that path. I really did have no idea how Magda would treat me when I told her I was leaving. She’s been so—yes, it’s the proper word—sweet to me the past few months.

But now? This?

I was almost to the path that led to Magda’s house when I heard the call. “Alex!” Shrill. Overwhelmed.

Magda came rushing up to me. Her face flushed and wet with tears. I knew instantly that my departure was not to be the easiest task in the world.

“My god, my darling, where did you go?” she asked, sounding breathless. “I’ve been out of my mind!”

Oh, dear, I thought. Simplistic reaction. But I couldn’t allow terror to invade my system. If I did, I’d never get back to Ruthana.

“I’m sorry,” I said. It was difficult to speak coherently. So—as I usually did—I lied. “I’ve been walking,” I told her.

Stupid lie. “For hours?” she asked. She didn’t sound distrustful, only flabbergasted.

“It’s a long path,” I continued lying. I hoped it was long.

“I know,” she agreed. She embraced me torridly, and I was—pointlessly, no doubt—aware of how different her capacious breasts were from Ruthana’s. “My god, you frightened me,” she said. “I thought the faeries had gotten you.” Now that really dismayed me. The faeries had gotten me. One of them, at any rate. How was I going to get back to that one now?

“No,” I lied thrice—I was getting deeper and deeper, into the quicksand of prevarication. (I advise you to avoid it; remain on the solid, smooth ground of truth.) How would I get out of it? For a moment, I considered using the powder right away, blinding Magda and retreating into the woods.

I couldn’t do it. I renounced the impulse. It would defeat my intention, destroy my purpose. Which was an honest one. Even now, I appreciate that. Hurling the powder into Magda’s face at this point—when she had been so kind to me—would be, at best, contemptible. I would never forget such a moment of cowardly surrender. I was more in debt to Magda than that.

So, instead, I tried to console her as we walked up the path and across the lawn to her house. We went inside and sat on the sofa. I held her in my arms, her voluptuous warmth affecting you-know-who. (I keep telling you I was only eighteen, not a whit mature!) Only when I compelled my distracted brain to rein in did Mr. Johnson (I believe that’s what they call him now—I have not the slightest know-how why) manage to allay his automatic traverse toward inflexibility.

He dropped like a stone when Magda told me, quietly, “You’ve been lying to me.”

“What?” I muttered. The numbskull I was.

“You heard,” she said.

“I didn’t lie,” I lied. Poor, pathetic me. How was I ever going to get back to Ruthana?

“You did,” said Magda. Firmly. “You’ve been in the woods again. With that faerie girl.”

That’s right, I was, I thought. I couldn’t say it. I was really being cowardly now. It shamed me. “No,” I lied yet again. Why are you lying? I condemned my tongue—trying to elude the fact that my brain was responsible. I had to change directions. “Yes,” I forced myself to say. “You’re right. I was. That’s why—”

I was halted in midsentence as Magda pulled away from me—I should say “jerked”—and looked at me intently—I should say “glared.”

“You lying bastard,” she called me.

Her abrupt change in demeanor, her use of profanity, shocked me.

“Magda, I apologize,” I started, “for—”

Once again, I broke off. This time blocked by her sudden rant. (I should say “infuriated rant.”)

“You had to go back to that little woodsy bitch, didn’t you?” she accused me. “Had to fuck the faerie way! Was it nice?! Did you come inside her?!”

That was too much; temper replaced shame. “Magda, that’s enough!” I cried. “She’s completely innocent.”

“Innocent, is she?!” Magda cried back. “Luring you into the woods to let you fuck her!”

“Stop it!” I yelled. “She didn’t do that!! She loves me!” I made the final incriminating statement then: “And I love her!”

Dead silence from Magda. Her face gone bloodless, she looked at me with a murderous expression. Her voice sounded thick as she said, “You’ll be sorry you said that.”

“Why?” I demanded, unaware of the depth of her rage. “I love you, too. It’s just—”

“Don’t tell me that, you lying prick,” said Magda, her language shocking me again. “I know you don’t. I’m only Magda to you. Your witch whore.”

Somehow, I sensed that she was right. That was how I felt about her.

“I was your mother,” Magda said. “And you loved fucking your mother.”

“No,” was all I got out, chokingly, before she ranted on.

“You wonder if Edward fucked me! Yes, of course he did! That’s why he enlisted! Isn’t that why you enlisted, you little shit?! Because you loved fucking your mother?! And felt guilty for doing it?!”

“No!” I raged. “You’re wrong!”

She ignored me. Kept on ranting; it appalled me, all the vileness in her brain. “Your mother was a whore!” she screamed. “She loved sucking your cock, didn’t she?! Didn’t she?! Sonny?!”

“I think you’re horrible,” I said. “I think you’re sick. I feel sorry for the baby.”

“Oh, do you?!” she demanded. “Don’t bother, there is no baby.”

I don’t remember, but I think my mouth fell open. “What?” I said, my voice barely audible.

She heard it, though. “There is no baby, Alex. I got rid of it.”

Dear God. It was all I could think, my brain suddenly gorged with the ghastly memory of Self Aborting an Unwanted Chimera. I tried to rid myself of the memory, but the bloody image clouded my awareness.

“You did that?” I asked; very weakly.

“Yes, I did, darling,” she said with a terrible smile. “I buried our daughter—what there was of her—in the garden. You want me to dig her up?”

“How could you do such a thing?” I muttered.

“You want me to describe it?” she asked. The terrible smile again.

“No,” I said.

“You thought I wanted your baby,” she persisted. “I didn’t. I wanted Edward’s baby. But he was dead, so I had yours instead. But I wanted a son who could be my lover. And the baby was a girl, and I didn’t want a girl. So I ripped her out and buried the pieces! Shall I go on?!”

I felt as though my head were caught in an ice-cold vise. I could barely breathe. Her rant had frozen me. All I could do was shake my head. At least I thought I shook my head. Maybe I didn’t.

Magda bared her teeth. “You still want me to be your mama, don’t you?” she said. She yanked open her dress, pulled up her now swollen breasts, and thrust them out to me. “All right, suck Mama’s tits,” she snarled. “Nurse on Mama’s tits again.”

I had to fight off my ungovernable loins. I did, though, so horrified was I by her insane behavior. “Get away from me,” I told her.

She would not relent. Pushing against me, she tried to push her breasts in my face. “Drink Mama’s milk!” she commanded. To my astonishment, a milklike liquid began squirting from her rigid nipples. It couldn’t be natural! It had to be something Magda was doing. I confess, I almost succumbed.

It was near too much for a fallible teenager. How I managed it was a tribute to my love for Ruthana and secondarily, most secondarily, my sense of rightness.

Which is when the notion suddenly occurred. I’d say inspired me, but it was hardly an inspiration, more a foolhardy defense. “Is this a witch thing?” I asked harshly, trying to push her away. “Did it come from your manuscript?”

Magda went rigid, the flow from her breasts abruptly ceasing. She looked at me the way Medea must have looked at her children—hate and love combined. “You’ve been in my library,” she said. The way she said it raised a coating of ice on my bones. Now I was truly afraid. I had enraged a witch who hated me, most likely wanted me dead. “I’m sorry.” I tried, “I didn’t mean—”

I had no conclusion for my lamebrained excuse. There was none. I knew it. And God knew Magda did as well. I wondered (only half-alert now) what she meant to do as she pulled away from me and stood. She didn’t close her dress. She pulled it up across her head and tossed it aside. Now she was naked. I struggled to my feet and moved with laborious stiffness toward the front door.

“No, you don’t,” said Magda. “Mama doesn’t want you to go.” She could hardly speak (it was more a growl), but her intent was clear. She pushed up to her feet and staggered to the end of the bookcase. Reaching to its side, she pulled back a sword; it looked more like a machete. She walked toward me. “Your head is mine,” she mumbled thickly; her throat sounded clogged. I kept moving clumsily toward the door.

With a startling, terrifying cry, Magda began running. I glanced back quickly. She was brandishing the sword, clearly intent on decapitation. I noticed her lolling breasts as they bounced up and down. No arousal. I was too afraid. My god, was I afraid! “You can’t get away!” Magda shouted, her voice now frighteningly loud.

The powder!

I whirled and plunged, as best I could, a hand into my jacket pocket. To my horror, I almost dropped the vial, juggling it between both hands before I got a grip on it. Magda was almost on me. I struggled with the vial, trying to open it. Magda reached me, took a savage swipe with the sword. Whatever instinct saved me, I don’t know. I ducked beneath the slashing blade. Magda stumbled, off balance from her frenzied attempt to behead me. I opened the vial and threw the gray powder at her. It caught her full in the face.

She screamed in pain, and I saw that much of the powder had struck her eyes. She staggered to one side, dropping the sword and reaching up, misdirectedly, for her suddenly blinded eyes. “You bastard!” she cried, “You fucking bastard!”

I didn’t wait for more. I moved infirmly for the door and left her thrashing through the room, unable to see, eyes running with uncontrolled tears; her lurching body colliding with furniture, snarling as she flung over smaller pieces.

I opened the front door and left, running without stopping until I reached the path.

Ruthana was waiting for me.

I clung to her with desperate need. “Thank God,” I said. I repeated it so many times—unable to think, only overswept with gratitude—that I lost count. I was safe. That’s all I knew. I was safe.

Wrong again.