The Witches’ Kitchen Read online

  Arre was out of breath. She stood on the rock, looking out over the trees, and saw the water gleaming in the distance, and the wind rushed over her and she saw the clouds scudding over the sky, and the wildness of this place overcame her. She sat down and hugged the baby in her arms, looking east, toward Jorvik and her home. Aelfu sat by her feet and put her thumb in her mouth, and her eyes began to move, traveling from side to side, and Arre realized she was looking for her mother. An unbearable ache began in Arre’s breast, and a low moan escaped her.

  Then from the trees the madwoman came, Corban’s sister. She walked down the steep short slope toward them. At Arre’s feet Aelfu reached up and took hold of her skirt. Arre clutched the baby, thinking what she might do if this woman attacked her.

  The woman’s eyes held her, clear as water, deep as wells. Arre sighed, her muscles loosening. Corban’s sister sat down beside her and put her arm around her shoulders. Arre turned her gaze toward the water again, feeling suddenly warmer and easier. But she wanted to go home. She wanted more than anything now to go home. She leaned on Corban’s sister and fixed her gaze on the water.

  Miska woke suddenly, sharply, his skin tingling; the dream still flowed through his mind. He saw the island, as if he were standing there on Tisconum’s shore, and he saw the water between him and the island sucked away, every drop, drawn up out of his way, and he walked across the dry ground to the island, untouched.

  He knew his grandmother had sent him this dream; he could almost hear her voice in his mind. He felt the truth of it down to the soles of his feet. The blood pulsed hot in his veins. He could take the island now. He could lead the Wolves to their revenge and, leading them, rise up where he belonged.

  He could not sleep, or even lie down anymore. Untangling himself from his bedding, he groped his way out of the lodge, past young men still rumbling in the dark, and to the open air.

  The night hung over everything. The ground was damp with dew; after the closeness and stinks of the lodge, the air was fresh and clean, and he gulped it down, trying to cool his excitement. The village was silent. He stood a moment looking around, at the dim shapes of the other lodges, the even line of the wall, the overarching sky, all pricked out with stars. The moon was setting. The sun would rise soon. He went down the path through the lodges to the meeting ground, in the center of the village.

  The firepit was cold. They had not danced for a long time, not since the men had followed Burns-His-Feet to the disaster at the world-water, but the ground was still soft from years of pounding. Groping in the darkness around the foot of the oak tree, he found a drum, and he sat down beside the dead fire and began to beat on the drum. He knew no music, he had no art for this; his hands felt awkward on the taut hide. He made a steady beat like walking. In his mind the dream hovered like a mist over everything he saw and thought.

  Soon the others came, one by one, creeping out from the lodges, walking down to the meeting ground.

  Lasicka came first, Burns-His-Feet’s youngest nephew; his left leg still didn’t work right, but he had healed, at least, when so many others had died. Seeing it was Miska with the drum, he stopped and stood staring at him. Maybe he remembered what Miska had said to him after the terrible defeat, when Miska had struck him, over and over, enjoying it. In any case Lasicka came now and sat down before him, and after him the others gathered around and sat down.

  They made a smaller circle now than before. Besides Burns- His-Feet and Anatkwa and the others dead in the battle, three more had died in the long hard walk home. They sat before him with their heads down, not looking him in the eyes. With Burns-His-Feet and Anatkwa, his sister’s son, both gone, they had not asked the women to choose a new sachem; nor had the women given them one.

  Quietly, near the edges of their pack, others came, untopped boys even younger than Miska. And these watched Miska, their heads up, their faces smooth with hope.

  Miska’s hand pattered on the drum. He had no pipe to pass among them, to draw them together; the drum had to do. He said, “It is time to avenge Burns-His-Feet. We can take the island now. I had a dream.”

  At the core of the pack, the older men stirred, turning to look at one another. Lasicka frowned and leaned forward.

  “You are no one, Miska. Nobody. Why should a true dream come to you?”

  “My grandmother sent it to me,” Miska said.

  They stirred, crowding together, uneasy at the mention of his grandmother. The sun was rising and he could see their faces, the planes of their cheeks, the wary suspicion in their eyes, and the fear that crimped their mouths shut. Only ,one or two of the untopped boys nudged each other and turned their gaze steadily on him. He made the walking beat on the drum, but none of them spoke. The grown men huddled together, as they had on the long way back home, and said nothing. Around them, the boys waited, taut.

  In the village, the women were coming out of the lodges, as if they waked up to some ordinary day. Someone among them gave up a stream of song, welcoming the sun, and a child cried. Bark buckets in their hands, three women walked down toward the river for water and looked over curiously at the men in their pack. The first tang of smoke rose from fires stirred back to life. A fat thrush perched on the fence began to sing.

  Desperate, Miska laid his hands flat to the drum, walking. “We can take the island now,” he said. “We can win now. We can get back what we lost there.”

  In front of him Lasicka lowered his eyes to stare at the ground. The men leaned on one another. The long death walk home had gotten into their bones like a poison. They sat motionless with their heads hanging and said nothing.

  Miska flung the drum away. “You are all cowards,” he said. “You are not my people. You are not Wolves.” He rose up onto his feet, his skin tingling with the force of what he felt. He said, “I am going. I shall avenge Burns-His-Feet and our honor, I alone. I spit on you.” He turned and walked away, off through the village.

  Behind him, he heard a great shuffling. He did not look back; he walked faster, his eyes already on the path.

  Squatting by the fires, sitting with their babies, the women stopped to watch him pass. Epashti was one of them, standing before her lodge. As he went by, she called, “Miska! Where are you going?”

  “To avenge the Wolves,” he said, and walked on.

  “I am going,” she said. “Wait for me.”

  He did not wait. He walked out between the lodges to the gate in the wall, where already some of the women were picking up their hoes and rakes. As he went out the gate, Epashti caught up with him, carrying a bundle and with her baby on her back.

  He did not look at her; he kept his gaze aimed straight ahead, but he smiled. Now he heard other feet, following him. He did not have to turn to see. He knew the men were coming, after all—he had drawn them, he was leading them. Smiling, his eyes straight ahead, he went on down the path between the fields, back to the east, and their enemy.

  A few days after Benna’s death, Arre came into the house and found Euan in the upper room, and he was gathering up all Benna’s drawings.

  “What are you doing?” Arre cried. She came into the room, reached out her hand, and took hold of his arm.

  He turned, shrugging her off, a pile of flat stones and planks in his hands. “Take these away,” he said. “We should sleep in here now, but I can’t stand all these faces looking at me.”

  She took the drawings from him. They seemed warm to her, warm and heavy. She sat down on the bed with them in her lap. The topmost was a dark stone with an image of a newborn baby, sleeping curled up, perfect down to his toes, his ears. Every tiny curve was an echo of the curve of his body, the memory of the womb. She lifted her eyes again to Euan.

  “Can’t you leave them where they are?”

  “I hate them,” he said, as if that were all that mattered. He kept his back to her and bent for another stone, groaning with effort. “I don’t understand why it’s so hard to take these up. It’s as if they have roots down into the wall.”


  She looked down at the baby on the stone in her lap and gave a little start: Its eyes were wide open; it was looking back at her, so real its eyes seemed aware. She was sure its eyes had been closed, before. Then, as she watched, the baby faded away. The lines vanished into the gray of the rock. The wide dark eyes paled away into blank stone, and it was gone.

  “No,” she cried, and reached for the slab of wood below, but it was the same: a blank space. In her lap was only a clutter of rocks and wood. “No,” she said. She looked back to Euan, who had torn the last drawing from the wall.

  “What is it?” he said, his face bland. When he had no argument but meant to get his way, he gave her this same stone face. She lowered her eyes to the rock in her hands, her heart torn.

  “Nothing,” she said, and rose, gathering the clutter up in her skirt. “I’ll take these away.”

  A few days later, though, as she was roaming the compound thinking of Benna, she came on another stone, just behind the house, with a drawing on it.

  It was tilted up against the back wall of the house. Careful not to touch it, she sank down on her hams to look at it. It startled her: There on the flat surface a man and a woman lay side by side with their arms around one another. She could not entirely see their faces, which were turned close together, but she thought the people were Corban and Benna.

  Her skin crept; she thought instantly of her and Euan, in their bed at night, and felt a wash of heat rise up her arms and throat. Her mind tumbled in confusion. This was surely sin. Such things should never be made into pictures. Benna should not have done this one.

  But she had done it. Arre put her hand to her breast, where her heart was beating at the gallop, and made herself look at the drawing again. She was sure the two people were Corban Benna, lying in one another’s arms.

  She should not be seeing this, her sister’s intimate thought. Yet it was beautiful, as everything Benna made was beautiful.

  She put her hand out to the stone; it seemed warm against her fingertips. After some while she laid both hands on the stone and tried it gently. It came up easily. She went around the house, over to the height under, the rock, where her sister lay in her windy grave. Miru and Aelfu, playing in the dooryard of the house, saw her and came over to her.

  She laid the stone down on Benna’s grave and sat there and prayed a while, with the two little girls sitting in her lap. Miru laid her head against Arre’s breast and fell ‘asleep, and Aelfu sucked her thumb and fingered Arre’s sleeve with her free hand, her eyes aimed steadily at nothing. Arre crossed herself.

  She thought of what Benna had said about God, and how she had flinched from that, how she had been horrified. Now she struggled to see what Benna had known and seen, which seemed somehow all around her, and yet out of reach. She longed bitterly for Benna, to help her understand. She cursed herself for not listening more when her sister was alive.

  Her heart rolled over in her breast. Words rose unbidden in her throat.

  “I think by now, sister, you must wish we had never come here, and I, too, wish that so heartily. And yet to see you again—to see you—I would have come twice as far, if only—”

  Her eyes swelled with hot tears. In her lap, Aelfu turned, her eyes wide and distant, and laid her hand on Arre’s lips. Arre closed her arms around the girls, their hair against her face smelling of seaweed. The wind roared in the trees; she felt again that vast, hostile stirring.

  C H A P T E R N I N E

  Lasicka swung his hatchet-face toward Miska. The journey here had wearied the older man, and he leaned heavily on his good leg. He spoke in a voice of great sadness. “So, here we are, Miska. And it is as it was, there is the island, here is the water, what can we do now, where we failed before?” He shrugged, answering himself.

  Miska rubbed his hand over his mouth. Before him lay the great water’s rumpled uneasy edge; out there, on the slope of the island facing him, was the strange dwelling of the pale-skinned strangers. But it had changed since he had seen it last. Now a ring of stones surrounded it and a wide dusty swath of the ground around it, and inside this ring he could see people gathered. Even outside the ring, the grass was beaten down. He saw some men leave the ring and tramp off along the foot of the great rock, reach the end, and turn into the edge of the forest.

  He sank down on his hams, thinking about this. The place looked much more formidable now. The dream faded in his mind. Behind him Lasicka stood with his mouth pursed, waiting, Lasicka, who crippled or not was of the blood of the sachems; for an instant Miska’s spirit quailed.

  Faced with the uneasy water again, he remembered the great fish, the salt wave rising up, and he shrank from trying. If he could not do it, he could never drive these other men to do it. All the way here he had studied them; he knew which was strong, and which was fast, and which was worth listening to, but he had learned no way he could force them to go willingly into this water.

  He realized he was clutching the amulet bag that hung around his neck—where he kept, now, only two objects: his grandmother’s fingerbone and the little white stone.

  He had sent one of the boys on ahead of them, to see where Tisconum was—to make sure Tisconum had not caught wind of them yet. Most of the other men were wandering around the shore looking for something to eat. Above a broad band of slick stinking weeds and driftwood and shells that coated the top of the shore, the land shelved up toward some trees. Epashti had left the men and gone back there to the shelter of a shallow bank, where she was making a camp. Her baby gave a wail, and she stopped to comfort it.

  Miska turned back toward the island again. The encampment on it looked like a big scar in the slope of the hill. A worm of rage stirred in his gut. There had to be a way to root these people up. He stood, went into the water to his knees, and bent down and put his hand on the flopping, tumbling surface. It was colder than he expected. Behind him, somebody called his name.

  He turned; the boy was jogging down past the stretch of weeds and wood toward him.

  He said, “I found nobody, Miska. And no village, either—a burnt-out place, but nobody is living there anymore.”

  Lasicka was ambling up to them, his head turned a little, as if he did not really want to be there but something drew him on. He said, “Are there more of them?” His head jerked toward the island.

  Miska rubbed his hands together. That thought had just occurred to him, too. Maybe more of the white people had come, maybe a lot more, the whole tribe. He squinted toward the island. Yet there were no more boats, and he could make out no people at all. He turned to the boy, whose name was Ellioh. “Were there any boats at the burnt-out place?”

  “Boats?” the boy said, startled.

  Lasicka swung toward Miska, his eyes narrow. ‘We tried that. I remember what happened.”

  Miska’s chest hurt suddenly, as if some big fist clenched around him. The smell of Lasicka’s fear made his hackles rise. But he saw suddenly a way of forcing this.

  He said, “I will go, tonight, myself, to show you it can be done. And come back. And then we will all go.”

  Lasicka hissed between his teeth. Miska watched him steadily, aware of his own long hair, his boyhood, in front of this warrior, and the insult in what he said. Lasicka gripped his hands together, gave a long stare toward the island, and turned back to face him.

  “I should let you go alone, and be destroyed. It’s what you deserve, Miska.”

  Miska fought against a smile. “I said I would.”

  Lasicka pressed his lips together; Miska saw the fear in him fighting with his pride, and he saw the pride win. The sachem’s nephew said, “I cannot let you do that. You and I will try. If we reach the island”—he shrugged, looking out over the water a moment—“we will signal to the others to come. But if we fail, we will all go back home.”

  Miska snorted. “You will have to keep up with me. I won’t wait for you, Lasicka,” he said. But when Lasicka’s head jerked up, his eyes angry, Miska looked loftily off, his chin in the air. “Goo
d, we will do it your way.”

  “In the dark?” Ellioh said, his eyes popping. He was only a boy, and should not be speaking up, but with untopped Miska there in front of him he was bold enough. “You’d try to cross the water in the dark?” Behind him, Epashti looked up; she was pounding seeds and nuts in her wooden grinding bowl.

  Miska said, “Otherwise they’ll see us coming. I will go first, and signal you with a torch when I get to the shore.”

  Beside him, Lasicka grunted at him, and he nodded, not looking around. “Yes; Lasicka and I. Anyway, when we have proven it can be done, you will come after us.”

  Ellioh swiveled his shocked gaze toward Lasicka. Beyond him one of the other men stirred, Hasei, whose brother had died with Burns-His-Feet in Tisconum’s village.

  “If two of you can go, I can go. I’m not letting someone else go before me.” Beside him, another of the boys, Tiko, muttered and bobbed his head.

  “Me either.”

  Miska straightened, startled. They were all pushing toward him. Their voices rose, clamoring together, each trying to outshout the other. “You can’t go without me!” Only Lasicka sat silent in the midst of them, his head sunk down and his eyes gleaming.

  Finally, he said, “So it is, Miska. We will go. We will see what becomes of it.”

  In the night Arre heard shouts and screams and was instantly awake. Euan struggled up beside her on the broad bed platform. “What is it? What is it?” He cast back the thin ragged blanket. Outside Ulf’s voice rose clear and loud against the general uproar.

  “Up! Everybody up!”

  Arre turned and gathered the two little girls into her arms. “Somebody’s attacking us.”

  Euan let out a burst of oaths. Flinging a cloak around him, he plunged through the door into the little aisle between the rooms. Arre pulled the rag of the blanket around the little girls and bent over them and kissed their faces.