The Witchery, page 29
Léopoldine would report that she’d explored the Stone Room, and its strangeness, as long as her turned Eye allowed; for the accompanying headache was extreme…. To clarify: Leo had not willed the Eyeherself, but rather the room had seemed somehow to elicit it. This further told of trouble. Still, she’d have explored more, eager to please Sebastiana with a fuller report—Were those wings upon the wall, flapping still? And how could the redness be at once so stony-looking yet soft to the touch?—but…something was wrong. She knew it. Sensed it. Scented it upon the air, as a dog does fear.
Léopoldine’s fears riled her witch’s blood as well as the walls of the Stone Room; for, in time with her increasing dread, the white-flesh began to writhe, to wriggle, to flap in mockery of its respective living functions; and the pieces of imperfected Stone—which she too took for rubies, as a ruby had been the last stone Peronette Gaudillon had had to sell to survive when cast aside by her last protector, and the proceeds from its sale had secured that garret in which the three had lived, and in which Peronette had slow-died of consumption, alternately coughing up both a blackish, treacly substance and bitter accusations aimed at her children, whom she’d long seen as the antithesis of treasure—…the pieces of stone, I say, had begun to swell and shape-shift upon their nails, as if jellied. This I’d witness myself, some six months on; and let me add that the sight of the Stone Room in that state was something that bound us, somehow, Leo and me, each to the other.
Léopoldine left the Stone Room and tried to set aside her fears, and wondered where else she might look; but it was then, returned to the terrace and standing in the shade of the creeper—it, too, seemed somehow animate, illuminate…—she heard that most discomfiting of sounds: silence. No voices drifted down from the assoltaire or the tents atop it.
As Leo ran the angles of that terrace, she roused the light-birds from their roost. The bats fell, too. Surely the courtyard was then chiaroscuro’d, seeming naught but shadow or light. And when the witch achieved the spiraling staircase, she slipped upon its first step, falling to settle onto a knee now gashed and bleeding, badly, her Blood being up, as it were. The pain receded a moment later; for she looked up to see the stairwell darkened and somehow…constricted, the change in its aspect attributable to the presence of Queverdo Brù, who stood several steps above her where she knelt.
He asked—too solicitously—if she was well. She responded with silence as she stared up at Brù, silhouetted by the light cast by the remaining bats. Finally, she stood, fearful not of Brù, but rather the too-tiny bats, whose larger, black brethren she’d come to loathe whilst living in the caves of Rome.
Standing at the bottom of the stairwell, Leo determined to somehow push past Brù and the bats. She charged, only to find herself in the man’s arms, wherein she suffered his scent, his perfume, such that, to this very day, she drowns the memory of it in a scent all her own, a perfume so potent it quite overwhelms the violet odor occasioned by my coming down, as we call it. Oh, but worse than the hold the alchemist had upon her, and worse than his scent, much worse, was the play of his hands; for these Brù worked, obscenely, meaning to discern, finally, if she, my daughter, was doubly-sexed as well. Poor Leo. She was shocked into stillness. She’d seen such congress, let me call it, when things in Rome had progressed from bad to worse, and she and Luc had stood nearby, silent in the recess of doorways, watching whilst strange men offering coins were let to cover their mother in shadows; but she’d never known such acts herself, bodily. A few men had tried, yes, in months past, soliciting her in Italian—a language Leo all but scraped from her tongue the moment Sebastiana descended, saw her, showed her Eye, and said “bonjour”—but those men, well, she’d been able to send them away, let me say; and away they’d gone, yes, some bloodied and others cursing her—Stregha!—for that particular pain she’d willed onto their private parts.
Enfin, it is easily supposed that, had Léopoldine had her wits about her that afternoon, and had she met Brù upon a playing field rather more level than a spiral staircase slick with batshit, she’d have bested the man such that he’d have begged, begged for such an end as that interment that would be his fate, some months hence. Hélas, this was not the case…. Only when Leo heard the alchemist rip the blouse she wore, which had been gifted her by Sebastiana, well, that rip, that shredding of sheer and wondrous silk, more so than the man’s hands upon her, strangely, is what allowed Léopoldine to rouse herself and strike; the result being this:
Brù, tumbled to the lowest step, found four scratches set into the right side of his neck by the recently lacquered nails of Léopoldine. Now she stood in ascent, atop the stairs; from whence she turned and climbed—blouse torn, skirt askew—till she stood atop the assoltaire, watching, wondering as…Could it be? Or was this a trick of her turned Eye? For it seemed, indeed she’d have sworn that the sofa upon which Sebastiana sat, with her back to the stairwell, and seemingly oblivious to all that had transpired there, was alive; for all along its humped back a whiteness writhed, as if a…
“Snake!” hissed Léopoldine; and she leapt and ran to the tent in question, bounding up before Sebastiana to find her sitting stock-still and silent, and somehow…golden. As if dusted with the ore. Again she named the predator.
“Yes, heart,” said S., “I know it is a snake; and much as I’d like to move, I find I cannot.” Only then did it seem she saw Léopoldine before her, in disarray, one budding breast bared. Said S., later, it was then she understood, finally, fully, why it was Brù sought me: He’d use me, alchemically, for my sur-sex, my duality. “Where is he?” she asked of Leo, tentatively. “Did he do…?”
Léopoldine put her off, pointing behind S. to the on-slithering, pulsing python and looking this way and that, desperate to determine what bound Sebastiana to the sofa; for she was certain to be strangled if…
“Come closer,” commanded S., coolly. And when Léopoldine approached, warily—bats were bad, but a python twice as long as she was tall was positively, quoi?…Perilous, yes—Sebastiana slowly raised her arms. “No, no!” said she when Leo tried, quite logically, to tug her from the sofa. “We mustn’t move too quickly. The snake is too near, and wants this leaf Brù blew onto me.”
“Leaf?” echoed Léopoldine…. Indeed, gold leaf clung to Sebastiana’s face and neck, her hands, and brightened, too, the blue, lightweight robes she’d worn for this call, as it were, in concession to the Havanan heat. It was the gold that drew the snake. And for its snack of gold it would strike.
“Take these,” said S. now, referring not to her proffered hands but rather the rings upon them. “Take the rings of gold—there, there, and there,” and with a twitch of her fingers she indicated which rings she meant, “and…and feed it.”
“The snake?” asked Leo. “Feed your rings to the snake?” Already the python was near enough Sebastiana to flick its split tongue onto her shoulder, to take its gold-treat flake by flake.
“Yes, dear,” said S. through a clench of teeth, “…not the rings, the gold of them.” Still the child stood there, uncomprehending. “Heart,” said S., “see that saucer, there?…The black one, yes. Take my three rings and drop them into…into the milk or whatever that is, and bring the bowl here. Vite!” Whereupon the younger witch, though still not knowing the why of it all, obeyed; such that Ourobouros soon ate, ate, from its black bowl set onto Sebastiana’s upturned palm, three rings of gold, each worn by S. that day for a purpose of its own:
Onto her thumb she’d slipped a band inset with peridot (for “purity”), whilst onto her first and third fingers she’d put rings showing jade (for “the promotion of psychic strength”) and lapis lazuli (to draw “the higher self”). Too, she’d sported two double bands of purest malachite, for—said she, later, with a laugh—“the warding off of evil…. Oh well.”
My sister, you see, had rightly supposed that the strangeness, the luminescence of the animals under Brù’s care, was owing to something alchemical; and as all things alchemical devolve to gold in some way, it seemed she and Leo might succeed in distracting, with that element, the python, whose purpose—as put forth by Brù, when already the snake had snuck up behind Sebastiana and it was too late to move—was plain: The python was to contain—literally, if need be—the older witch whilst Brù descended in search of the younger.
Blessedly, Sebastiana had supposed aright: Ourobouros turned its intentions, and its tongue, from my sister’s shoulder and neck toward her hand, and down the length of her arm it came. It was all, all Sebastiana could do to support the snake’s density, its watery weight, its slickness and chill. Léopoldine watched Sebastiana struggle, but what could she do? Sebastiana warned her to stillness: Too sudden a move and the python might strike, and there’d be no extricating her then…. Finally, slowly, Sebastiana lowered her arm onto the sofa, and there she sat the bowl down, balancing it carefully; for if it spilled, well…And then she moved out from under the python—quite snaky herself, as Leo tells it—and stood to take a shaking Léopoldine in her arms.
Together the witches backed from the python to the tent’s far edge, watching as Ourobouros took the rings onto its tongue, one by one. “It’s a strange man we’ve met this day, heart,” whispered Sebastiana. “Where is he now?”
Unfortunately, the answer to that question came from Brù himself, bloodied at the neck but risen to stand at the head of the stairs: “Congratulations,” said he with a hiss as he bowed to both witches.
Leo would later laugh, admitting that she’d hoped at that very moment to learn from S. that witches do indeed fly; for, with Brù blocking the stairs, there was no other way off his rooftop.
A conundrum, then; one that could only be solved by confrontation.
Sebastiana he’d meant to strangle, and Léopoldine he’d sought to…unsex; and so it is surprising, yes, that Queverdo Brù survived to greet me in that same tent some days later, his neck scarred by a daughter I’d yet to learn of. And indeed, the witches could have done away with Brù in myriad ways, witchly or otherwise; but Brù, too, afforded some measure of offense. He knew now that Sebastiana had already commanded me to come to Cuba, and he knew, too, where to search me out if I never showed. As a lure, S. had outlived her usefulness. As for Léopoldine, well…he’d learned she was no Rebus. How then did the standoff end? I will let Sebastiana tell it; for, some while later, she took up her Book once more, to close the story of her Cuban sojourn; like so:
Oh, heart, regrettably, perhaps unforgivably, I chose to believe the last of the alchemist’s lies—much to Léopoldine’s dismay, might I add, she being stronger than I and flush with witch-sense I ought to have heeded—and I acceded to Brù’s suggestion that we leave in peace, we witches promising a spell-free departure in exchange for Brù’s telling what he knew of you.
Yes, H., Brù implied he had news of you, which he’d hoarded. I saw no other choice, as the day’s dread events—je déteste les serpents!—had drained me, had so weakened me I could not draw from Brù, by witchery, what he knew, but had to rely on his speech, his lies. — H., pardon my blunder. — But let me say, too, that I believed the Blood might come to me there, where I stood, upon a Cuban rooftop, and I’d not risk such an undignified demise. And though I’d the want to put the man down, truly I did, as one puts down a dog, I hadn’t the will, nor the simple strength, and I dared not turn Léopoldine loose upon him, as I’d begun to tutor her in the subtleties of the Craft, the whiteness of the Work, and feared she’s stray down a darker path if the first of her works was the murder of Queverdo Brù. — And so, yes, when the alchemist said he’d a second letter from you, of more recent date, one in which you’d put off my command, saying your health, at present, precluded all travel, well, I believed him. Pitifully so, never even asking him to show said letter, though he did give an address in St. Augustine, the same that I now know to have been false. — Le bâtard! — My strength recovered now, how I’d like to retake to that rooftop and change the day’s end!
As it was, the witches left Queverdo Brù’s in peace. Or as peaceably as possible. Said S., recounting the tale of their departure, The child’s Eye did not settle for an hour or more, and she had to walk home head bowed, with me leading her by hand, lest it be seen.
Léopoldine seemed less bothered by Brù’s accosting her than by the mysteries she’d uncovered, and which she thought would remain mysteries forevermore; i.e., the Stone Room, a description of which she struggled to convey to Sebastiana. The more Leo spoke, the more thankful Sebastiana was for their peaceable escape. Oh, but now their problems were manifold: How to rendezvous with me in St. Augustine before Brù could? And what if the alchemist had lied (as indeed he had)? What if I were en route to Havana in search of my sister and her secrets? What if I arrived and found only Brù? What would I do then? Of course, she tried to find me by listening, in the witch-sense of the word; but I was not in distress then—chronic melancholia notwithstanding—and even if I had been issuing a silent au secours, it is doubtful Sebastiana could have heard it; for the travel, the turmoil of late, had weakened her so. Moreover: A witch’s powers decrease as the Blood comes closer.
More immediately, Sebastiana worried that Asmodei might learn of the day’s events and their effect upon her. If so, how would she keep him from killing the alchemist? And should she? Wrote S.,
I kept the day’s secrets, or rather altered them in the telling. In this, Léopoldine swore her collusion, her cooperation. And I did so not to mark any merit of my own, or to dissemble, but rather because my Asmodei has always wanted to kill for me, and I have never let him. Neither I nor the world stands to benefit from such Red tribute as that. And certainly I could live guilt-free to the end of my days knowing I’d let an aged alchemist live to the end of his, pursuing his secrets, tending his athanor high above the streets of Havana. — Or so I thought then. Today, my decision would differ. And Brù would die.
The party’s departure from Cuba was not delayed, but rather split. That is, the day after they’d surprised Brù at home, they sailed in pairs, as per this newly made plan:
Asmodei and Luc would sail to intercept me in St. Augustine; or, if need be, at sea, if already I’d sailed for Havana. In so doing, they’d keep me from Brù; for Sebastiana had slipped and spoken of St. Augustine as my home. Thereafter, we three would sail south to meet Sebastiana and Léopoldine upon Indian Key; which place had been decided upon by Sebastiana. She’d heard much of the island from Asmodei, who’d learned of it whilst drinking in the portside sinks he favored, and frequented, whilst in Havana. It seemed a suitable rendezvous: a set-apart place peopled by sea types disinclined to question newcomers, lest they be questioned in turn. And its population—tens of transients, perhaps a hundred—offered, in the aggregate, protection from the pirates and Indians who preyed upon the area’s lone sailors and settlers; yet Indian Key was not so populous as Key West, where Brù—if he chose to pursue the four, and began his search in the logical place: the keys’ prime city—might hide amidst the shadows cast by that island’s several hundred settlers.
And so, two ships sailed, the one carrying Asmodei and his Lord B. to St. Augustine, the other set to make the shorter crossing to Indian Key. There the witches would inveigle themselves, and await our reunion…. It was a plan, yes, one further refined and put into fast effect at dawn of the day of sail; as so: Witch-work was wanted…. Two spells would suffice, thought S.
Said spells Sebastiana was too weak to work herself. She’d not slept the night prior, passing a white night in order to write those words in her Book that ended with her imperative to me, Run! Additionally, she’d written two words in our familiar cipher of old: Indian Key. And so it was she turned to the children.
Having first secured an oath from Léopoldine to the effect that she would never, ever, cast a spell upon Luc without his knowledge, Sebastiana led the young witch in her work. As for Luc, well, he was happy to hear he’d a part to play in the plan.
…Understand: Neither child knew they were setting off in pursuit of a parent—Sebastiana, thinking that news was mine for the telling, had sworn Asmodei to secrecy as well—but they were happy to leave Havana, and quite cooperative, doing exactly as Sebastiana bade them do. If all went well, thought they, they’d meet another witch and please their sister-savior in the process.
Enfin, the question to be answered was this: How—if Asmodei and Luc failed to find me in St. Augustine or at sea, and I ended up in Havana—…how could Sebastiana communicate to me both her warning and her whereabouts? As known, she wrote it in her Book of Shadows. But however was it that said Book found its way into Brù’s library, where I, in turn, found it? Like so:
Léopoldine cast a Shadow-spell upon her brother, under cover of which he slipped through Brù’s black doors and into the library unseen. There he lay the Book of Shadows down, as directed by S., first cutting the heart from the Delphinus and attaching to said volume that dissembling spine-like ribbon reading Labille-Guiard…. As for the spell itself? Simple enough; but it rendered the already sly child all but invisible.
Requisite to the spell’s success was a suitable effigy of Luc. As clay could not be found fast enough, wax was used: Five candles were melted down to malleability and molded in the hands of Sebastiana and her most willing pupil, Léopoldine. They fashioned the wax to represent Luc, replete with strands of his hair and—here apologies were made—a left foot twisted inward, just so, lest the spell prove inefficace. (People’s inclination to turn from the lame further contributed to the spell’s efficacy, of course.)
Blackness was wanted as well, as a quality of the poppet; for this would ensure Luc would not be espied in the streets. Onyx and hematite were pried from Sebastiana’s remaining rings—these being the blackest stones literally at hand—and pressed into the effigy’s chest. Luc swore he felt the pressure of this upon his own chest, and compared it to climbing from the Tiber after too long a swim. Asmodei, for his part, returned to the hotel short hours before he and Luc were set to sail, his errand a success: He’d procured black feathers, black velvet (satin would have sufficed), and a black box, all three of which were purposed in accord with common witch-sense: The feathers were pressed onto the effigy’s back (“Ouch!” said Luc, with a wink at his startled sister) so as to ensure fluidity, fleetness of foot, and all but literal flight, whilst the black velvet was wrapped round the finished effigy, for quiet, and, finally, the whole of the poppet was placed into the box, for concealment. The spell thusly cast—“That’s it?” asked an incredulous but rather self-satisfied Léopoldine—Luc set off from their hotel. There was nothing the others could do now but wait whilst the boy worked; and this they did, hailing the returned hero within the hour.
