All Hallows' Eve (13 page)

"Yeah?" he asked warily.

The old man rarely spoke, and yet he had already called this information out once before, while Edward had been on the roof.

Because Edward had learned to read the old man's face—despite the overlapping wrinkles and pits from smallpox and the leathery quality that comes from spending one's life outdoors—he caught the glitter of annoyance and almost ducked in time. The old man's fist caught Edward on the ear.

"All Hallows' Eve!" he shouted as though Edward was hard of hearing. Edward wasn't hard of hearing—or at least he hadn't been before the old man had taken to cuffing him on the ear. He did sometimes have trouble understanding the old man's peasant accent, which was made even more indistinguishable because the old man's teeth were rotten stubs, so that his words whistled as well as stank; but luckily the old man rarely grunted more than three or four words at a time.

"All Hallows' Eve," Edward shouted back, to indicate he'd heard and understood.

The old man swung again, and this time Edward was able to back out of his range.

"Witches' sabbat," the old man said.

Edward held his arms out helplessly.

The old man gestured toward the pen where the two goats and the three sheep and the pig waited for their evening feeding. The old man must have been getting better at reading Edward's face, too. Or he had no confidence Edward had the wit to understand. He made an exaggerated gesture from the animals to the doorway of the cottage.

Oh. Indoors. He wanted the animals indoors, so the witches wouldn't get them. With the roof newly mended, the stink would be held in nicely.

"All right," Edward said. Then, because he wasn't sure the old man understood and because he was afraid of the old man's fists, he said, "Yes. Indoors. I understand."

The old man walked away, shaking his head and muttering. Edward had no idea what he had said or done that the old man could have found fault with. He worked from sunup to sundown, backbreaking labor tending the fields and the animals and the house. His body was sore; his belly was never full; dirt had ground so deeply under his nails and into the creases of his skin, he doubted he would ever come clean again. His clothes were rags, and since the old woman had died in the heat of summer, fevered and coughing up a bloody flux, Edward had no idea where new clothes would come from, now that her loom stood idle.

Thinking of the old woman, Edward's mind skittered to the past winter, when his hands had gotten so red and raw from the cold, his skin had grown thin and cracked, and every movement brought pain. He had cried—he couldn't help himself—and the old man had kicked him for his noise. The old woman had given him a piece of raw wool from one of the sheep. Edward had looked at it helplessly, having no idea what he was supposed to do with it. He had assumed she wanted him to draw it out into thread, the way she did. But the woman had taken it back into her own hands and rubbed it, not gently, onto his skin. He had jerked back in pain, but then his skin felt better, and he realized there was something in the wool that soothed all those tiny wounds.

It was the only bit of kindness he had experienced from either one of them.

The old man was nailing the shutters closed—against the witches, Edward supposed. The thought of witches made Edward shiver. The sun was low in the sky, the cloud tips touched by pink. It would be a cold night, and Edward guessed that he would probably be more grateful for the warmth of the animals indoors than he would be oppressed by their smell.

But still...

He didn't think he could survive another winter here, just him and the old man.

He had thought of running away, but there was no place to run to. He had gone with the old couple to the town for the Saint Bartholomew's Day Fair, and he had seen beggars there, and realized he had it hard, but not so hard as they. And he had seen a man with only one hand, a bloody rag wrapped around the stump, and another man with a brand on his cheek. For each of them the old woman had turned to Edward and said, "Thief."

It was a warning, he guessed. It was her way of telling him he was lucky they had taken him in at all, of letting him know that if he left—now that they'd fed him, more or less, and mended his clothes, more or less, and kept him alive, more or less—he owed them and they would have the right to come after him if he tried running away.

Or maybe she wasn't saying that he was legally beholden to them; maybe she was just reminding him that, being the useless fool he was, his two options were to rely on their charity or to thieve.

The old man had finished nailing the shutters closed, a job that was obviously too important to leave to Edward, who never seemed to do anything to the old man's satisfaction. Probably tomorrow he could be trusted to pull the nails out, and then he would have to hammer them straight so they could be used again for something else, since nails, even bent rusty nails, were too precious to be squandered. No doubt Edward would not hammer them out straight enough. Either that or he would spend too much time working on them. There would be
something
the old man would use as an excuse to strike Edward again.

Busy thinking about all this, Edward was slow to realize the old man was coming toward him, and here he was, having stood idle for the whole length of time it had taken the old man to hammer in four nails. Edward took hold of the pitchfork to return it to its place, but the old man snatched it out of his hands, taking a good deal of Edward's blistered palm with it.

The pain was almost enough to make Edward brave. The old man glared, challenging him to say or do something.

I'm almost seventeen,
Edward thought.
Surely I'm as quick and as strong as this old man.

But experience so far had proved otherwise. Apparently casual cruelty bred strength. Edward lowered his gaze and shuffled off to tend the animals, while the old man climbed onto the roof and set about fixing whatever it was he saw that Edward had done wrong in the thatching.

Come spring,
Edward told himself.
Let him try me again, come spring.

Edward fed the animals and then rounded them up and brought them into the cottage. The animals didn't seem to approve of this plan any more than Edward did. "All Hallows' Eve," Edward told them. "The witches'll get you." The animals didn't look convinced, and they scattered and balked and stepped on his toes with feet that were harder and heavier than they had any right to be. Some folk didn't believe in witches, but Edward knew they were real. Edward had reason to fear witches.

Finally all of the animals were indoors and the old man was satisfied with the thatching. Edward thought that at last the day's chores were done, but then the old man handed him the bucket to bring in water from the rain barrel, even though Edward had already fetched some earlier. Apparently not enough.

Not too many more days and there would be a film of ice on this water, Edward thought. Summer was hard, with the work of pulling the plow by hand, since the old man didn't have an ox, and the sweat running into his eyes, and the insects constantly biting. But hard as summer was, winter would be much, much worse, with the numbing cold, with the food dwindling—just him and the old man and the tiny cottage.

Edward brought the bucket to the door, which the old man had closed, another petty annoyance, as Edward needed both his sore hands to carry the bucket. He tried to shoulder the door open, but it appeared to be stuck. He kicked the door to get the old man's attention—the cottage was one room, so it wasn't like he could get lost in there. But the old man didn't come to let him in. Edward had to set the bucket down on the ground, causing twinges in both his back and his hands. He tried the door again, but it wouldn't budge.

"Hey!" he yelled. Had the old man lost his wits and placed the beam into the latch, forgetting that he'd sent Edward outside?

But still the old man didn't come to the door, and Edward remembered the look that had passed between them. Come spring, he had told himself, he'd have the strength to keep the old man from bullying him and from taking his petty rages out on him. The old man had realized this, too. Realized he had gotten all the compliant work he could out of Edward and now had locked him out. On All Hallows' Eve. The witches' sabbat.

"Let me in!" Edward shouted.

Smoke was coming from the chimney hole, and Edward could smell the soup they'd had at midday being reheated. It was mostly turnips, but there'd been a carrot, too. Edward had grown fond of treats like carrots this past year.

"Let me in for tonight," Edward called to the old man. "If you want me to leave tomorrow, I will."

He remembered the townsman with the stump for a hand. Useless as the old man always called Edward, at least during the summer there were tasks Edward could do. He didn't know why the old man and the old woman had taken him in, this time last year, except for anticipating his help during the course of the spring and summer months. Would he ever be able to find another couple, another soul to take him in just as autumn faded?

Edward flung the bucket of water against the door. He drew a mental picture of the water freezing overnight and the old man stepping on the ice in the morning, slipping, and breaking his neck. But most likely it wouldn't get that cold tonight. Cold enough to suck all the life's warmth out of Edward's body, but not cold enough to freeze water.

Edward had to satisfy himself by hoping the old man would fall asleep before remembering to block the chimney hole, so that the witches would be able to fly in and get him.

Of course, witches that spiteful and resourceful would surely get Edward first.

Edward wondered where he should try to hide, where the witches wouldn't think of.

But then he thought of the coming winter, and of the beggars, and of the men who had been maimed for being thieves.

Edward knew he could not survive the winter on his own. But could he, perhaps, survive the witches?

The sky was growing dark, but Edward headed off into the woods. There was a place there, near where the old woman had gone to get herbs. She had pointed the clearing out to him and had warned, "Witches dance," and had shaken her head vigorously to him not to cross that area.

Edward's scalp had crawled that day when he had recognized the place—the place he had found himself after his one disastrous encounter with a witch.

Edward had hated the woods because of the clearing, but now he headed for it, thinking the witches were his only hope.

Would he see again the witch who had sent him here? Did she dwell in this land? Would she—or any of her sisters—take pity on him, a year later? He had certainly learned his lesson, and he hoped that would be enough to satisfy a witch.

Shivering, with his inadequate clothing and his half-empty belly, he told himself the worst thing the witches could do would be to ignore him.

In the woods, the darkness settled around him quickly. His breath condensed in the night air, and the branches, almost bare, creaked alarmingly overhead. He found the stream and followed it to the lightning-struck tree, and then, there was the clearing.

He hunkered down, wrapping his arms around himself for warmth, and he watched the sky for a sign of the witches coming to celebrate their sabbat. He would apologize, he would beg, he would promise anything if they would only send him home. For he had certainly learned his lesson and he was no longer the same boy he had been last year.

A shadow crossed the moon, and then another, and then another, and then a whole swarm of shadows—the witches, flying on broomsticks, approaching the clearing.

Edward stood to wait for them. And while he waited, he remembered...

It hadn't been this cold last year—and he had had a thick jacket—when he had oh-so-foolishly gone out with his friends. They had all thrown rolls of toilet paper into the trees and shrubbery of the neighbor they thought was just a crazy old lady, but Edward had gone up onto the porch of her house, to unscrew the lightbulb from the lamp by her door, and to crack an egg or two on the windowpanes. That was when, suddenly, she had opened the door, home after all.

"You malicious little toad," she had called him—and now that Edward knew what she was, he supposed he should consider himself lucky that she hadn't actually turned him into a toad.

His friends had all very quickly scattered into other people's backyards, leaving him to face her alone.

"Well," he had said by way of explanation, "you didn't answer your doorbell."

She had folded her arms across her chest and looked down her nose at him.

Still trying to make a joke of it, Edward had said, "Trick or treat."

And she had said those words that had condemned him to this world, "Oh, trick," she had said with a malicious smile. "I definitely believe you deserve a trick."

My adoptive mother always told me, "Evelyn, your real mother loved you so much, she gave you away."

I can't remember being young enough that this made sense to me. I always thought it was like saying, "I love chocolate so much, I never eat any." Or, "I love the color pink so much, I never wear it." Or, "I love Brad Pitt so much, I never go to his movies."

What's weird is that in fact, the older I got, the more ways I thought to
make
it make sense. Maybe you love chocolate, but you've got diabetes so you can't eat it; you love pink, but it makes you—personally, because of your coloring—look pale and washed-out; you love Brad Pitt, but you realize that good as he is to look at, his acting is a disappointment, so you better stick to just drooling over pictures of him.

So I tried to figure out
how
my mother could love me so much she had to give me away.

Some thoughts:

1. My mother found out, while she was pregnant with me or shortly after my birth that she was dying, and she knew it would be better for me to be placed immediately with another family rather than staying with a mother who was slowly fading and growing too weak to pick me up or feed me.

For my mother's illness, picture Nicole Kidman in
Moulin Rouge,
progressively getting dark circles under her eyes and elegantly coughing her lungs out. Or Bette Davis in that old black-and-white movie
Dark Victory,
where she bravely continues to work in her garden, hiding from her loved ones that she has gone blind due to a brain tumor.