Witches (22 page)

It was Witch’s Pond, she was sure of it.

Why was it so warm? It was November, but it felt like July.

Amanda forced herself to get to her feet, to get moving. She had to get to Mabel’s. She was either dreaming, mistaken, or on some kind of acid trip. Then the thought crossed her mind that maybe none of last night had occurred at all. Wouldn’t that be a relief?

Her powers were still gone. She tried to send herself back to the cabin. Nothing happened. That much hadn’t changed.

They could be gone forever, after what she’d done.

There was nothing left for her to do but to make it to her friend’s somehow. She started wobbling among the trees, weak as a baby. She was sure she was going in the right direction. She’d gotten to know the woods well over the last ten years, yet as she moved through the forest, she didn’t want to admit that it looked different to her somehow today. Alien. The landmarks, the special trees and rocks, she was familiar with were no longer there.

She continued to call Amadeus as she went, but he never answered.

A creeping suspicion began to haunt her, but she kept shoving it away. It was an insane notion. Insane.

She didn’t get too far before the heat, the heaviness of her strange dress, and her poor physical condition caught up with her. She dropped to the sunburnt grass under an oak tree and, exhausted, ravenous, and drained, she curled up at the base. Laying her head on a pile of soft leaves, she fell asleep.

A sandpaper tongue on the side of her face and a bundle of warm purring fur snuggling up against her, woke her up sometime later.

“Amadeus,” she cried out gratefully, gathering him into her arms and smothering him with kisses and hugs. “Thank God you’re okay. I thought I’d lost you.”

Left you behind, was more like it, she thought at him.

Amadeus blinked at her, but said or thought nothing that she could hear. Just like a regular cat.

No. It was her. She couldn’t understand him anymore.

She knew what that meant. Without her powers she was no longer a witch, but Amadeus was still a witch’s familiar. He was talking, probably a mile a minute right now, but she just couldn’t hear
him.

She held him in her arms, happy to have him with her, anyway, and got back on her feet. She winced at the stiffness throughout her body. It was as if it wasn’t her body at all, she felt so...disoriented and odd. The rest had helped her, though. She did feel a little better.

She took a deep breath, made a promise to herself not to become hysterical until she knew more, and began walking again. Amadeus was content for her to carry him in her arms.

First toward what was left of her home, to prove something to herself. Then to Mabel’s.

Amanda knew the woods like her own backyard, but she couldn’t find her cabin, or even what was left of it.

There was nothing but woods.

That was her first big shock. The second was that—though she was positive she was in the right place—Mabel’s trailer was no longer where it used to be, either. Just deep, lush woods.

Amanda paused in the exact spot where Mabel’s kitchen used to be and mumbled to herself.

Wherever she was, she wasn’t home.

“This isn’t Kansas, Toto,” she said sarcastically to no one in particular, then chuckled at the old cliché, as Amadeus stretched in her arms.

“Well, I guess we should see if Canaan’s still there. Don’t you agree, Amadeus?” Her voice held no emotion and a little fear. The cat didn’t answer her, merely gave her a knowing look. Amanda suspected that Amadeus already knew what she’d find, had all along. For once, she missed his constant jabbering.

“First,” she went on, speaking half to Amadeus and half to herself, “we need to find something to eat. I’m starving.” Amadeus seconded that motion with a plaintive meow. She let him down and he scooted off into the dense foliage to catch something small and furry. He seemed to have recuperated well enough from his battle with the coven, but then he’d stayed away from the demons and he was a hardy little creature.

She found wild blackberries everywhere and gathered them in the top layer of her tattered gown, gobbling them as she searched for more.

Again it crossed her mind, whose dress was she wearing and why? She rubbed her fingers on a fold of the gown’s material. It was coarse. The stitching looked handmade, not machine sewn.

The food gave her strength and kept her from dwelling on her predicament. The thought crossed her mind, too, that if it was November how come there were ripe blackberries everywhere? It wasn’t long before Amadeus came traipsing back, a large fish in his jaws and a proud swagger in his walk.

“Yes, you’re the great hunter,” she complimented him, taking the fish from his mouth. “Now all we need to do is find some way to cook it.”

Amadeus used his paws to scrape together a few twigs and dry leaves and then touched them with his paw. A tiny flicker of flame leapt up and Amanda quickly added more twigs and small sticks of wood of her own until the fire was going strong.

“So you still have some powers left, huh?” she asked her familiar, plunking down cross-legged before the fire.

He looked back at her innocently. Lifted his paw up from the ground ever so slightly. Amanda got the message.

“A little power, right?”

He bobbed his head,
yes,
like a person would have.

“How about cleaning the fish? You got a knife of some kind up your sleeve, er, paw, too?” she inquired.

He shook his head,
no.

“Too bad,” she said, and looked at the scaly fish distastefully. “We’ll have to improvise.” Her mouth was already watering. Hot food in her stomach was all she could think about at the moment.

Over the fire, she built a homemade stove of piled rocks and laid the uncleaned fish in the middle. It baked slowly, but it baked, and soon after scraping off the scales with a sharp rock edge, she, and Amadeus were feasting, washing it down with water from the stream where Amadeus had caught the fish.

It was one of the best meals Amanda had ever had.

After they had eaten, Amanda rinsed her hands in the stream, stood up, and said, “Well now, my friend, it’s time to go into town and see if it’s still there.”

The six miles into town stretched ahead of her like a hundred. Amanda took it at a leisurely pace and Amadeus trailed behind her, checking things out and sniffing at everything.

Amanda had had another shock. There’d been a different face reflected in the water when she’d been washing her hands. Not a bad-looking face. Pretty, really, and a lot like hers in many ways, but, like her clothes, not hers. Her hair’s texture and color was different. The ends of the hair she held in her hand and stared down at were black. Thick, straight black hair. Not wavy brown. For some reason, her appearance hadn’t surprised her too much. Not after the gown thing. Amanda had gulped, breathed in deeply, and turned away. She didn’t even want to dwell on what her change of appearance and dress meant. She was unsettled enough.

“Amadeus,” she queried later as they were heading toward town under the broiling sun, “I don’t look like myself anymore, do I?”

The cat stopped at her feet and glanced up at her with a look she could easily read. He swayed his head negatively.

“I look like Rachel,” she murmured. She didn’t need her familiar to tell her she was right. Though she’d only seen Rachel’s ghost, she knew what the woman had looked like. Just like the woman she’d just seen in the water. The implications of her new look, along with everything else, didn’t make her happy.

“Thank God I’ve got you, Amadeus.”
That I’m not alone.

They were hiking through thick underbrush; leafy trees interlaced above their heads, sometime later when Amadeus grabbed at the hem of her gown with his claws and tugged her to a standstill. His eyes fixed on something hidden in the next thicket.

Amanda slid back behind a tree, and waited.

She didn’t have long to wait. Indians. A whole mess of them, moving gracefully and silently through the bush. Lean as whips, bronze as dark copper, with braided hair adorned with feathers. Faces sharp-angled and predatory like hawks. Bows slung across naked shoulders, arrows clicking in leather quiver pouches, they marched within twenty yards of her and never blinked an eye.

Amanda held her breath until they were gone, and then released it in a relieved, but muffled sigh. She looked at Amadeus, her eyebrows raised high, a hand massaging the area above her right eye as if she had a nagging headache.

“Oh, boy,” she whispered. “Somebody else’s forest, somebody else’s body...and wild Indians, too. Just what I needed. What else is different, Amadeus?” she asked, tiredly.

The cat had no answer.

“Let’s get out of here before they smell us on the air and come after us.” Amanda swung around—and froze.

Not more than eight feet away from her, standing perfectly motionless in the shadows of the tree was an Indian brave. Not much taller than her with a long, morose face that could have been of dark stone, and shining ebony eyes that seemed to delve into her soul. He wore a buckskin breechcloth and unadorned moccasins, necklaces of shells and animal teeth hung around his neck, and there were a few feathers stuck in his loosened long black hair. It was difficult to tell his age. Not old. Not truly young. Maybe thirty. She had no idea what tribe he was from.

Amanda had seen hundreds of Indians. All in books. No picture had ever prepared her for the real thing. He was so...fierce-looking. Savage, yet beautiful. The Indian studied her for what felt like an eternity, not moving. Amanda didn’t know what to do. Should she run, or remain still? She remembered reading somewhere that Indians respected bravery. She lifted her chin, stared directly at him, and tried not to look too scared. He wasn’t actually threatening her in any way. Just watching her. Must be her torn clothes.

Amadeus was at her feet, snarling
at the brave, back arched and eyes flashing
.
The Indian’s gaze
shifted from her to the cat and back again. He didn’t seem afraid, which was more than she could say for herself.

Amanda bent down and scooped the cat up into her arms, shushing him. She didn’t want the rest of the tribe back here. One Indian was enough.

“What do you want?” she asked the brave. He merely looked at her.

“I mean you no harm. Just go about your business and leave me to mine.” She made sure her tone was friendly, but firm. Even if he didn’t understand her, it was all she could think of to do.

The Indian’s lips curled slightly at the corners in a flat smile which might have been either cruel or merely playful, and he said something in a strange language, gesticulating with his expressive hands.

“I don’t understand you,” she said sadly, shaking her head.

The brave moved swifter than she could react, taking one of his necklaces from about his neck and slipping it around hers.

Then he was gone. Vanished back into the woods as if he’d never been there at all.

Astonished at the whole experience, she gazed down at the necklace. Panther teeth. She smiled.

What had that been all about?

Amanda didn’t really care. The Indian was gone and she was unharmed. She hurried through the forest, Amadeus trundling along behind her, and as far away from the Indians as she could get. Toward town.

She hadn’t gone too far when she spotted the turkeys. A large flock of them scattered as she approached, gobbling in alarm, and waddled away into the next clearing.

Wild turkeys? She’d never seen so many wild turkeys together at one time. Hunters had depleted them long ago in this area.

Again her inner voice pinched her—Indians and wild turkeys? Her worst fear seemed more and more possible. She was no longer in her body, no longer in her time.

Amanda kept walking. Her clothes were too warm for a sultry afternoon, and were soaked with sweat. Her hair was tangled and loose, damp underneath. She brushed her hair away from her face and, by touch alone, quickly wove it into a braid. She had nothing to tie it with and after searching a few minutes in the brush she found a strip of vine and wrapped and tucked it under around the ends. That helped. As the sun glared down at her from a lower position in the blue sky, she finally arrived at the outskirts of Canaan proper.

She stared at it, her mind unable to comprehend what her eyes were seeing.

“This doesn’t look like my Canaan, either,” she breathed, putting her hand up to her throat, her eyes growing hard as the final piece of the puzzle dropped into place, as if sealing her tomb.

She was
in another time. At least a couple of centuries past. She recalled what Mabel had said about Rachel and when she was supposed to have lived. Around seventeen hundred. In school, she’d been interested in the American seventeen hundreds and had read many books on them. The town, or village, she was inspecting before her could easily be from that period.

It had one main dirt street, cabins of rustic wood or small houses of clapboard squatted close to each other along it on long narrow plots of fenced-in land. The fences she recognized from the history books as being split-rail zigzags...or what the pioneers of the time referred to as snake or worm fences that kept the cattle each family owned from straying at night and out of the gardens. During the day the livestock were taken to graze in a common village green, which, if she guessed correctly, would be somewhere ahead of her at the end of the main road.