Son of a Witch Read online

  She didn’t wait for an answer, and turned back to the body.

  It was hard to take the measure of a man who displayed the flaccid composure of a corpse. No brow is noble when it is dead: It has no need to be. This lad seemed about as close to death as one could be and still harbor hope of recovery, yet the sense she had about him was neither tranquil nor restive.

  He was a young man, with youth’s agreeable form: That much was apparent despite the bandages. The young suffer and die, too, and sometimes it is merciful, she thought. Then she was filled with an unseemly glee and selfishness that she had lived a long odd life of her own, and it wasn’t over yet. She was in better shape than this poor benighted kid.

  “Mother Maunt, are you yourself?” asked Sister Doctor.

  “A tremor of digestive grief, nothing more.”

  She couldn’t put her finger on it. She turned to go. There was Sister Cook to interview next, and other pressing matters of the day. As Sister Apothecaire fussed with the bedclothes and Sister Doctor dived to confirm the pulse, the Superior Maunt sighed. “We will do our duty, and no more than our duty,” she reminded them.

  They stood to attention. “Yes, Mother Maunt.”

  Neither tranquil nor restive, she thought again: It is as if his spirit is not here. His body is not dead, but his spirit is not here. How can this be?

  Blasphemy, and bad science besides, she lectured herself, and scooted away as fast as her arthritic limbs could manage.

  6

  THE SUPERIOR MAUNT had long since given up supervising Sister Cook. For one thing, the ancient maunt had little interest in cuisine, her stomach having been soured by too many decades of regrettable food served under bad kitchen government. Those appetites remaining to her, after all these decades, concerned feeding the spirit alone.

  So, pausing at the thresholds of the mauntery’s kitchens, the Superior Maunt felt a faint queasiness.

  Given where the mauntery was situated—on the back route from Quadling Country—the establishment took in its share of Quadling girls deemed too plain or unruly for marriage, or too dull for the mild professions—teacher, governess, nurse. Sometimes their families reclaimed them. More often, the girls ran away, but at least they were older and better fed when they struck out on their own.

  Still, while in residence, they were as a population docile enough, and they made good kitchen assistants. Looking for Sister Cook, it occurred to the Superior Maunt that a Quadling girl might sit with the convalescent upstairs.

  “Sister Cook?” called the Superior Maunt, but her voice was rusty. “Sister Cook?”

  There was no reply. Into the kitchens ventured the Superior Maunt. A few quiet girls worked in a sunny corner, kneading vast tough pillows of bread dough with their bare knees. The peasant practice was generally frowned upon, but the Superior Maunt passed by the novices, pretending not to notice, as she didn’t feel up to delivering a chastisement.

  Sister Liquor was high on a ladder, giving each purple glass bottle of savorsuckle brandy a quarter turn. She was singing to herself and swaying on her rung.

  “Mercy,” murmured the Superior Maunt, and kept going.

  The pantry offended with the promise of lunch: bread, moldiflower root, rounds of aged skark cheese, and soft blue olives, the kind even donkeys refused to eat. It’s not that hard to keep your mind on higher things when this is the daily fare, observed the Superior Maunt.

  The outside door was open. Beyond the pantry, in the walled orchard, wands of pearlfruit trees twitched and shuddered in the wind. The Superior Maunt went through, as much to catch a breath of fresh air as to see the severe autumn colors of pearlfruit leaves, which shaded from granite pink to a hesitant periwinkle.

  In the emerald grass near the well several novices sat on their aprons. They’d taken for a little outing one of the palsied biddies in a wheeled chair and kindly thrown a tartan over her lap. The ancient maunt—older even than the Superior Maunt, by the look of it, or more infirm, anyway—had pulled her shawl over her forehead, to keep the morning sun out of her eyes. Two of the novices were husking pearlfruit pods. A third was fingering some sort of instrument, a kind of zither or dulcimer with lengths of catgut strung along two axes, one set perpendicularly above the other. The effect of her plucking and slithering was more tympanic than melodic. Perhaps the thing was out of tune. Or the player untalented. Or even that it was a foreign way of making music. Still, the other novices seemed not to mind, indeed, even to take pleasure from the droning sounds.

  They leaped to their feet at her approach, scattering their work in the grass. They were Quadlings, the younger three of them. “Girls, please,” said the Superior Maunt. “To your tasks.” Then, deferentially, “Your health, Mother.”

  The older maunt nodded but didn’t look up. Her eyes were on the fingers of the girl playing.

  “I was hoping to find Sister Cook,” said the Superior Maunt.

  “She’s in the mushroom cellar, harvesting for a fungal soup. Shall I fetch her?” asked one of them.

  “No,” said the Superior Maunt, looking one to the other. “Are you all first-years?”

  “Shhhh,” said the crone.

  The Superior Maunt did not like being shhh’d. “Are you professed, the lot of you?”

  “Shhhh, he’s coming.”

  “Mother, I have work—” said the Superior Maunt. The sister in the chair raised her wrinkled hand. She had no fingerprints, no lifelines on her right hand—no identity, no history, nothing to read, as if her hand had been burned clean of individuality through some chastening flame.

  Only one old biddy had this hand. “What are you on about, Mother Yackle?” asked the Superior Maunt.

  The old creature didn’t answer, didn’t look up, but she did crook one hobbled finger skyward. The Superior Maunt turned. All kinds of romance and lore about visitors from the sky, from sacred scripture to rabble-rousing prophecies. The sky was hard to ignore.

  It wasn’t the sky, though, that Mother Yackle was indicating, but one of the trees. Out of it fell a ruffling cascade, like a stack of ladies’ fans sliding silkily off a credenza. A scatter of brazen feathers, red winking. A gold eye set in a pear-shaped skull.

  A crimson pfenix! Male, to judge by the plumage. The species was rumored to have been nearly hunted to extinction. The last known colonies of pfenix lived in the very south of Oz, where the watery acres of marsh began at last to dry out, and a strip of jungle thought to be seven miles wide still defeated travelers to this day. This fellow—blown off course, perhaps, or deranged by disease?

  The pfenix landed on the center of the musical instrument that the third girl was playing. She looked up in some alarm; she hadn’t been attending anything but her music. The pfenix craned his head and fixed first one, then another golden eye on the Superior Maunt.

  “If you’re looking for the talented one,” said the pfenix—well, the Pfenix, if he spoke—“this is the one for you. I’ve been watching for an hour, and she takes little notice of anything but her music.”

  The women said nothing. Talking Birds were not uncommon, but they rarely bothered to speak to human beings. What a specimen this Pfenix was! His rack of tail feathers fanned out laterally, like a turkey’s, but a Pfenix just as easily could unfurl his close-coiled camouflage feathers, which spiked globally all about him, affording a sort of private chamber of airy, concealing, fernlike fronds. A mature male Pfenix aloft in full display could look like a shimmering globe in the air.

  “Do you know the boy who has been brought here?” asked the Superior Maunt, beginning to govern her own awe.

  “I don’t know any boys. I don’t consort with your kind at all. I am a Red Pfenix,” he added, as if they might not have taken it in.

  The Superior Maunt disapproved of vainglory in all its forms. She turned to the musician. “What’s your name?”

  The girl looked up but didn’t answer. Her face was not as ruddy as some Quadlings—less red, more umber. Its shape was pleasing, proportioned al
ong the lines of an oakhair nut: broad brow, high cheekbones, sweet swollen cheeks like a toddler’s, a small but firm chin. The Superior Maunt, who did not pay much attention to the looks of her novices, was surprised.

  She was too beautiful to be a natural maunt, so she must be a moron.

  “She doesn’t speak much,” said one of the novices.

  “She’s been here three weeks,” added the other. “Her whispered prayers are in a dialect we can’t decipher. We think she cannot raise her voice.”

  “The Unnamed God hears anyway. Where do you come from, child?”

  “Sister Cook will know,” said the first novice.

  “Up, girl, up,” said the Superior Maunt. “You have been chosen by a Red Pfenix. You don’t talk much, but you understand our tongue? Just the one I need.” She offered her hand to the musician, who rose, reluctantly. The Red Pfenix nestled in the grass and set to ridding himself of lice.

  “Can I send for a bowl of scented water, something? Is there a way we can offer charity to you?” said the Superior Maunt. “We don’t have visits from the likes of you often. In fact, I think never.”

  “I’m only passing through,” said the Red Pfenix. “There’s a Conference farther west. But the music drew me down.”

  “You love music?”

  “If I loved music I wouldn’t have stopped. She doesn’t play very well, does she? No, I don’t love music; it interferes with my homing devices. I was merely curious to see an instrument like this again. The sound of her playing reminded me of a time I had seen one long ago; I’d quite forgotten. But thank you for your charity. I require nothing but a little rest.”

  The Red Pfenix looked at the musician, who stood shyly in her pale grey novice’s skirts. “She’s a puzzle, that one is,” said the Red Pfenix.

  “Got him!” shouted Sister Cook, coming up from behind with a snare, and indeed she had. The Red Pfenix squawked and thrashed; all the eyes in his plumage contorted. The scream was horrible. “Pfenix steaks!” said Sister Cook. “I have just the recipe!”

  “Let him go,” said Mother Yackle.

  It was not her place to speak next, and the Superior Maunt was irritated. She knew Sister Cook was thinking: Pfenix steaks! With knobs of butter, and tarragon mustard, and small new potatoes roasted in the same pan…

  “Let him go,” said the Superior Maunt, more sternly than Mother Yackle.

  “Shoot,” said Sister Cook. “I spend fifteen minutes creeping up on this bird, and with my lumbago I actually manage to catch it, and you say ‘Let him go’?”

  “Do not question my authority.”

  “I merely question your sense,” said Sister Cook heavily. She turned the snare over, and the Red Pfenix exploded away from the orchard, cursing.

  “He was on his way to a Conference,” said Mother Yackle.

  “Enough,” said the Superior Maunt. “Enough of this. Sister Cook, who is this novice? Where did she come from?”

  Sister Cook was grinding her teeth in annoyance at the missed opportunity. “Candle,” she muttered. “Left here by a gypsy cousin for safekeeping, said he’d be back in a year. Either she’d be mauntified by then or he’d reclaim her, but I said I’d take her on. She causes no trouble because she can’t gossip with the other girls, and she knows how to make a mean marrow gravy. I’ve had her working with Sister Sauce on the feast day roast.”

  “Can you spare her?”

  “Can I spare a Red Pfenix is a better question, and the answer to that one is no.”

  “We don’t eat Animals,” said the Superior Maunt. “I know times have changed, but it’s in our charter. We don’t eat anything that can talk back to us, Sister Cook, and if I find you have been butchering behind my back…”

  “I can hardly spare her,” said Sister Cook, looking at the musician. “But if you make her take that unnerving domingon with her, I’ll call it even.”

  “Domingon, is that what it is. I’d read of them, but never seen one. Come, my daughter, domingon and all.” The Superior Maunt gestured, with as tender a smile as her crabbed old mouth could assume. The girl rose. She took the Superior Maunt’s hand in an easy, unaffected way—the other girls snickered. Yes, she must be simple.

  “I had come looking to ask you what you remembered of a novice we once housed—the strange green girl, Elphaba.”

  “Before my time,” snapped Sister Cook, and left.

  Mother Yackle scratched her nose and yawned.

  The Red Pfenix was still screaming in the sky. He circled the towers of the mauntery, safe now, and recovering the ability to be affronted. He was like a clot of blood swimming above the infirmary.

  “Did you say there’s a boy in the house?” asked Mother Yackle. She let her shawl slip back, and raised her bleary, milk-clotted eyes toward the Superior Maunt. “Did he bring back the broom?”

  7

  THE SUPERIOR MAUNT was going to need a long rest after lunch, she knew: all these stairs. A certain penance regarding the joints. But she exerted herself, and Candle lent a willing arm without being asked, which was a good sign that the girl wasn’t hopelessly slow.

  The sun was high enough overhead by now that the room had grown warmer and begun to sink into noon shadow. The young man lay as he had lain, twitchless, blanketed with an unnatural calm. Sister Apothecaire and Sister Doctor had brought their small chores close, so they could be nearby while they worked—Sister Apothecaire, the grinding of herbs in a mortar, and Sister Doctor the annotating of symptoms in a ledger. Sister Doctor sat on one side of the bed, Sister Apothecaire on the other.

  “You know this novice?” said the Superior Maunt.

  Her colleagues neither admitted familiarity, nor dissented.

  “She’s a garden girl with an instrument called a domingon. I have heard of these but never see one. Apparently Candle has a small talent at music. Perhaps in the long hours on watch over Liir, she will develop it. Candle, meet Sister Doctor and Sister Apothecaire. You will have seen them at table or in chapel if not elsewhere.”

  It was not the professional maunts’ obligation to bow, but when Candle did not bow either, Sister Apothecaire, out of social anxiety, gave a lurching sort of bob that might have meant any number of things.

  To the older women the Superior Maunt said, “There are matters more pressing for you to attend to than the continual observation of our new guest. I have a different assignment for you.”

  “Mother Maunt!” replied Sister Doctor. “Far be it from me to question your discernment. But I must remind you, in loyal obeisance of course, that while you govern the spirit of this House, I supervise the health of the individual souls within it.”

  “As to such treatments that may be required,” began Sister Apothecaire, but the Superior Maunt held up her hand.

  “I will hear no objection. Candle seems a simple soul, but she can sit here and watch the boy. She understands my instructions. If he so much as speaks, she will let someone know. She can practice her scales and perhaps grow in skill. If he is to die, let him be comforted by the peculiar drone of her instrument. This is my wish, and I have made my point.”

  She cupped her hands before her in an archaic, formal gesture that meant “be it thus” or, depending on the expression of the speaker, “enough out of you, you.”

  Nevertheless, Sister Apothecaire protested. “I’m well aware of this girl, she doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain. You are making a terrible mistake—”

  “In this rare instance Sister Apothecaire is correct,” said Sister Doctor. “Should any wound suppurate, or a complication develop—”

  “I have other jobs for you two,” said the Superior Maunt. “Your insistence at brooking my will convinces me. You two are the ones for the next job at hand.”

  They paused in their flailing, affronted and curious.

  “I haven’t yet told you what I recently learned about the three missionary novices from the Emerald City who stopped here some days ago,” said the Superior Maunt. “Their small party was
ambushed and they were all killed. Scraped, I’m afraid. Someone will need to find out who did the deed, and why.”

  She turned. “Finish your nostrums and reinforce your binding spells at once, enough to last till dinner anyway, and come with me. I shall nap briefly instead of taking a meal, and we will convene in my sectorium when the lunch prayers are concluded.”

  She was untrained in their profession. How did she know they’d used several illicit binding spells? This was why she was the Superior Maunt, they guessed. She didn’t know medicine but she knew women.

  There was nothing for them to do but obey. Walking slightly in advance of them, the Superior Maunt couldn’t help but smile faintly to herself. The medical women were good, solid folk. They were merely curious, curious as hell, like the rest of the House. And whatever was troubling Liir, inside or out, he would recover or decline more comfortably without being smothered by the attentions of middle-aged maunts.

  The Superior Maunt paused to catch her breath. Stairs were the devil. Her two colleagues respectfully froze in place while she wheezed. The willpower of women, she thought. These two, and me besides. I make the awful choice to put them in danger. If anyone can manage the task at hand, they will. Keep them safe, she prayed.

  But why do I even have to put my dear sisters in jeopardy? Because my colleagues in the motherchapel dare to send young innocent missionaries into the wild—without so much as a guide. No Oatsie Manglehand for them—just faith, innocence, and courage born of stupidity. Damn the Emerald City for leaning down upon us all. Damn those—those bath mats in the motherhouse, for yielding to the influence of the government!

  She didn’t utter a private apology for the oath. She felt she’d earned the right to swear internally, now and then. When it was warranted.