Enchanted Pilgrimage (16 page)

Cornwall rose to a sitting position, shaking his head, his hand groping for the sword.

He gazed up at Jones, saying to him out of the fog that filled his brain, “You hit me. You hit me with your fist. A peasant way of fighting.”

“Keep your hand off that toad-stabber of yours,” said Jones, “or I'll cream you once again. All I did, my friend, was save your precious life.”

22

When Cornwall knocked, the witch opened the door.

“Ai,”
she said to Mary, “so you came back again. I always knew you would. Since the day I took you down that road, I knew you'd come back to us. I took you down the road into the Borderland, and I patted you on your little fanny and told you to go on. And you went on, without ever looking back, but you didn't fool me none. I knew you would be back once you'd growed a little, for there was something fey about you, and you would not fit into the world of humans. You could never fool Old Granny.…”

“I was only three years old,” said Mary, “maybe less than that. And you are not my granny. You never were my granny. I never till right now laid my eyes upon you.”

“You were too young to know,” said the witch, “or knowing, to remember. I would have kept you here, but the times were parlous and unsettled, and it seemed best to take you from enchanted ground. Although it wrenched my heart to do so, for I loved you, child.”

“This is all untrue,” Mary said to Cornwall. “I have no memory of her. She was not my granny. She was not …”

“But,” said the witch, “I did take you down the road into the Borderland. I took your trusting little hand in mine and as I hobbled down the road, being much crippled with arthritis at the time, you skipped along beside me and you chattered all the way.”

“I could not have chattered,” Mary said. “I never was a chatterer.”

The house was as Mary had described it, an old and rambling house set upon its knoll, and below the knoll, a brook that rambled laughing down the valley, with a stone bridge that spanned its gleaming water. A clump of birch grew at one corner of the house, and down the hill was a lilac hedge, an interrupted hedge that started and ended with no apparent purpose, a hedge that hedged in nothing. Beyond the lilacs a clump of boulders lay and in the land across the creek was a marshy pool.

The rest of the party waited by the stone bridge, looking up the hill toward the porch, where Mary and Cornwall stood before the open door.

“You always were a perverse child,” said the witch. “Always in the way of playing nasty tricks, although that was just a childish way that many children have, and no flaw in character. You pestered the poor ogre almost unendurably, popping sticks and stones and clods down into his burrow so that the poor thing got scarcely any sleep. You may be surprised to know that he remembers you rather more kindly than you have the right to deserve. When he heard you were on your way, he expressed the hope of seeing you. Although, being an ogre with great dignity, he cannot bring himself to come calling on you; if you want to see him, you must wait upon him.”

“I remember the ogre,” said Mary, “and how we threw stuff down into his den. I don't think I ever saw him, although I may have. I've often thought about him and at times have wondered if there really were an ogre. People said there was, but I never saw him, so I couldn't know.”

“Indeed, there is an ogre,” said the witch, “and most agreeable. But I forget myself. I was so overcome with seeing you again, my dear, that I fear I have been impolite. I have left you standing here when I should have invited you in to tea. And I have not addressed one word of welcome to this handsome gallant who serves as your escort. Although,” she said, addressing Cornwall, “I do not know who you are, there have been marvelous tales about you and the members of your company. And you as well,” she said to Mary. “I see you no longer have the horn of the unicorn. Don't tell me you lost it.”

“No, I have not lost it,” said Mary. “But it was an awkward thing to carry. It seemed so much like bragging to carry it all the time. I left it with the others who are waiting at the bridge.”

“Ah, well,” said the witch, “I'll see it later on. Once I'd heard of it, I had counted so much on the sight of it. You'll show it to me, won't you?”

“Of course I will,” said Mary.

The old crone tittered. “I have never seen the horn of a unicorn,” she said, “and strange as it may seem, I have never seen a unicorn. The beasts are very rare, even in this land. But let us now go in and sit us down to tea. Just the three of us, I think. It'll be so much cozier with just the three of us. I'll send a basket of cakes down to those waiting at the bridge. The kind of cakes, my dear, that you always liked—the ones with seeds in them.”

She opened the door wider and made a motion with her hand, signaling them to come in. The entry hall was dark, and there was a dankness in it.

Mary halted. “It doesn't feel the same,” she said. “Not the way I remember it. This house once was bright and full of light and laughter.”

“It's your imagination,” the witch said sharply. “You always were the one with imagination. You were the one who dreamed up the games you played with that silly troll who lived underneath the bridge and that daffy Fiddlefingers.” She cackled with remembering. “You could talk them into anything. They hated mud-pie making, but they made mud pies for you. And they were scared striped of the ogre, but when you threw stones down into his burrow, they went along and threw their share of stones. You say that I'm a witch, with my humped back and my arthritic hobble and my long and crooked nose, but you are a witch as well, my darling, and a better one than I am.”

“Hold there,” said Cornwall, his hand going to the sword hilt. “Milady's not a witch.”

The old crone reached out a bony hand and laid it gently on his arm. “It's a compliment I pay her, noble sir. There is nothing better said of any woman than that she's a witch.”

Grumbling, Cornwall let his arm drop. “Watch your tongue,” he said.

She smiled at them with snaggled teeth and led the way down the dark, damp, and musty hall into a small room carpeted with an old and faded rug. Against one wall stood a tiny fireplace blackened by the smoke of many fires. Sunlight poured through wide windows to illuminate the shabbiness of the place. A row of beaten-up houseplants stood on a narrow shelf below the windowsill. In the center of the room stood a magnificently carved table covered by a scarf, and on the scarf was a silver tea service.

She motioned them to chairs, then sat down behind the steaming teapot.

Reaching for a cup, she said, “Now we may talk of many things, of the olden days and how times have changed and what you might be doing here.”

“What I want to talk about,” said Mary, “are my parents. I know nothing of them. I want to know who they were and why they were here and what happened to them.”

“They were good people,” said the witch, “but very, very strange. Not like other humans. They did not look down their noses at the people of the Wasteland. They had no evil in them, but a great depth of understanding. They would talk with everyone they met. And the questions they could ask—oh, land sake, the questions they could ask. I often wondered why they might be here, for they seemed to have no business. A vacation, they told me, but it is ridiculous to think that sophisticated people such as they should come to a place like this for their vacation. If it was a vacation, it was a very long one; they were here almost a year. Doing nothing all that time but walking around the countryside and being nice to everyone they met. I can remember the day they came walking down the road and across the bridge, the two of them, my dear, with you between them, toddling along, with each of them holding one of your hands, as if you might need their help, although you never needed any help, then or any other time. Imagine the nerve of them and the innocence of them, two humans walking calmly down a Wasteland road, with their baby toddling between them, walking as if they were out for a stroll of an April afternoon. If there were anyone here in all this land who might have done them any harm, they would have been so shook up by the innocent, trusting arrogance of them that they would have stayed their hand. I can remember them coming up to this house and knocking on the door, asking if they might stay with me and I, of course, good-hearted creature that I am, who finds it hard to say no to anyone …”

“You know,” said Mary to the witch, “I think that you are lying. I don't believe this is your house. I can't think my parents were ever guests of yours. But I suppose the truth's not in you, and there is no use in trying.”

“But, my darling,” said the witch, “it all is solemn truth. Why should I lie to you?”

“Let us not fall into argument,” said Cornwall. “Truth or not, let's get on with it. What finally happened to them?”

“They went into the Blasted Plain,” said the witch. “I don't know why they did this. They never told me anything. They were pleasant enough, of course, but they never told me anything at all. They left this child of theirs with me and went into the Blasted Plain and they've not been heard of since.”

“That was when you took Mary, if it was you who took her, into the Borderland?”

“There were ugly rumors. I was afraid to have her stay.”

“What kind of rumors?”

“I can't recall them now.”

“You see,” said Mary, “she is lying.”

“Of course she is,” said Cornwall, “but we don't know how much. A little or a lot, all of it, or only some of it.”

“I take it sadly,” said the witch, dabbing at her eyes, “to sit at my own tea table, serving tea to guests who doubt my honest word.”

“Did they leave any papers?” Mary asked. “Any letters? Anything at all?”

“Now, that is strange,” said the witch, “that you should ask. There was another one who asked, another human. A man who goes by the name of Jones. I told him that I knew of none. Not that I would have looked; I am not a snoop. No matter what else I may be called, I am not a snoop. I told him there might be some on the second floor. That I wouldn't know. Crippled as I am, I cannot climb the stairs. Oh, I know that you think a witch need but use her broomstick to go anywhere she wishes. But you humans do not comprehend. There are certain rules …”

“Did Jones look upstairs?”

“Yes, indeed he did. He told me he found nothing, although he has shifty eyes, and one can never know if he told the truth. I remember asking him and …”

The front door burst open, and feet came pounding down the hall. Gib skidded to a stop when he burst into the room.

“Mark,” he said to Cornwall, “we've got trouble. Beckett has showed up.”

Cornwall sprang to his feet. “Beckett! What about the Hellhounds?”

“He escaped from them,” said Gib.

“That's impossible,” said Cornwall. “How could he escape from them? Where is he now?”

“He's down by the bridge,” said Gib. “He came running up to us, naked as a jaybird. Bromeley got a towel for him—”

The door banged, and feet pattered rapidly down the hallway. It was Sniveley, panting with his running.

“It's a trick!” he yelled. “We can't let him stay here. The Hellhounds let him escape. Now they'll say we're sheltering him, and they'll come swarming in here—”

“Pouf,” said the witch. “These pitiful little puppy dogs. Let me get my broom. There ain't no Hellhounds getting gay with me. They may act vicious, but give them a whack or two …”

“We can't turn him back to them,” said Cornwall. “Not after what we saw last night. He has a right to ask protection of us. After all, he's a Christian, although a very shabby one.”

Cornwall hastened down the hall, the others trailing after him.

Outside, coming up the hill toward the house, was a motley procession. Beckett, with a towel wrapped about his middle, was in front. He was not proceeding by himself. Hal walked behind him, and Hal's bowstring was looped about his neck. Hal held the bow and, twisting it, drew the cord close about his captive's throat. Behind the two came Oliver and a bunched-up group of trolls, brownies, gnomes, and fairies.

Hal made a thumb over his shoulder. “We got company,” he said, speaking to Cornwall, but not taking his eyes off Beckett.

Cornwall looked in the direction of the thumb. On the top of the barren hill across the brook sat a row of Hellhounds, not doing anything, with the look of not being about to do anything—just sitting there and watching, waiting for whatever was about to happen.

Coming down the hillside, heading for the bridge, was a giant, although a very sloppy giant. From where Cornwall stood on the gallery that ran before the house, he seemed to be all of twelve feet tall, but large as his body was, his head was small. It was no larger, Cornwall thought, than the head of an ordinary man, perhaps smaller than that of an ordinary man. And large as the body was, it was not muscular. It was a flabby body, a soft body, with no character to it. The pin-headed giant wore a short kilt and a half shirt that had a strap across one shoulder. He moved slowly, his great splay feet plopping squashily on the ground. His long and flabby arms dangled down, not moving back and forth the way a man's arms usually do when he is walking, but just hanging and joggling with every step he took.

Cornwall came down the steps and started walking down the hill.

“You stay here with Beckett,” he told Hal. “I will handle this.”

The giant halted short of the bridge. He planted his feet solidly beneath him, and his voice boomed out so that all could hear him.

“I am the messenger of the Hellhounds,” he roared. “I speak to all who have no right to be here. I bring you measured warning. Turn back, go back to where you came from. But first you must give up the one who fled.”