Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron Read online

  “Maria, we have to get out of here, before that old woman …”

  Maria waited a moment, then said, “Before she what?”

  “I don’t know. Does something awful.”

  His sister shook her head. “She’s not like that. She doesn’t hurt people. She takes care of them.” Another bite of toast, another swallow. “And she’s going to teach me to be like her. I’m going to be her apprentice.”

  Carlos gaped at her, which Maria—never hesitant to talk—took as an invitation to explain. “She asked if I wanted to when I visited her last spring. She told me some of the things she could do, but I didn’t believe her. Who would? But you know how I’ve been fighting with Mom and Dad, how bad the summer was, I was grounded all July … I started sneaking back up here, and she showed me what she can do.” She shrugged. “I’m sick of living with Mom and Dad. They treat me like a baby. Nedra—her name, it’s Nedra, I think it might be short for something, I don’t know—she treats me like a person.”

  “Adolescence is a social construct,” Nedra said from behind Carlos, and he hunched his shoulders, feeling vulnerable, but hesitant to turn and face her. “Once upon a time, a girl Maria’s age would be considered an adult—and treated like one. Look at me, Carlos.”

  Carlos turned slowly, and the witch smiled. She didn’t look a million years old. More than forty, certainly, but less than sixty, which didn’t make sense, because she’d been an old woman even in the stories his parents had heard when they were children in this town. She had streaks of paint on her chin, but her eyes were kind. Not that you could necessarily trust a witch’s eyes.

  “Are you going to make trouble for us, Carlos?” she said. “Try to take Maria away, when she’s chosen of her own free will to stay here?”

  “She’s a kid,” Carlos said, forcing himself to stand straight. The witch was a foot shorter than him, but try as he might, he couldn’t manage to loom over her. “She can’t make a decision like that.”

  The witch made a noise in her throat, a sort of clicking hiss, something that didn’t sound human—an entomologist had brought a glass tank full of giant hissing cockroaches to his biology class one year, and the noise she made was almost exactly like that. “Maria, those changes we talked about making in your parents, I think … we’ll have to make them in Carlos, too.”

  “No,” Maria said, and her voice was solid as a house foundation. “Carlos has always been good to me. I won’t let you mess with him like that. If you do, I’ll leave, I won’t stay with you.”

  Nedra smiled, just slightly, but her eyes weren’t kind anymore. “I could make some changes in you, too, Maria.…” She sighed. “But you wouldn’t be any good to me as a student then. Your mind needs to be your own. All right, I suppose it won’t matter. I’ll let you say your goodbyes, and finish up my work on your parents and your teachers and so on.” She took the knife from her robe, and Carlos grabbed her wrist, which was bony and felt fragile. But feelings could be deceiving.

  “Our parents? What is she talking about, Maria?”

  The witch pulled her wrist away effortlessly and left the kitchen, slipping out the back door.

  “She won’t hurt them,” Maria said. “She’ll just make them forget me, and really, they’ll be happier. They don’t seem to like having me around much.”

  Carlos started to speak but changed his mind. His mother and Maria had been very close until Maria turned twelve, when Maria became “possessed by the demon hormones,” as their father put it. She’d been something of a terror since, with lots of door slamming, shouted curses, shrieks of “I hate you!” and general dramatic disobedience … but she was still Maria. Carlos remembered his own sullen early teen years well enough to think the storm would pass.

  Maria was still talking. “She says she’ll just make a few cuts in the heads of their statues, little things, and that will take care of everything—”

  “What statues?” He pulled out a chair and sat down, suddenly exhausted. “What are you talking about?”

  “The carvings. Of Mom and Dad, and everyone else who knows me, except you. Back there.” Maria gestured toward the backyard.

  “She has carvings of our parents?”

  She nodded. “Of Mom, Dad, you, me, Abuela—everyone in town. They’re magic. That’s how she keeps us safe. As long as our carving is safe, we’re safe. I’m not sure how she does it—something to do with mixing a little bit of our blood into the paint.”

  “This is crazy, Maria. She’s not magic, she’s just a crazy old woman. And where would she get our blood, anyway?”

  “She can turn into a possum, or an owl, or a dump truck, or the reflection of light on the water,” Maria said. “You think she can’t make herself look like a nurse? Whenever a baby is born in town, she goes to the hospital or the house and gets a little bit of blood, and starts a new carving for them.”

  He shook his head. She was old enough to know better than to believe nonsense like this. “If you don’t leave with me right now, I’ll come back here, with Mom and Dad, and the sheriff if we have to, and bring you home. She can’t keep you here. It’s kidnapping.”

  “You come visit whenever you want.” Maria reached across the table and touched his hand. “But Mom and Dad … well. You’ll see.”

  This was stupid. He came around the table, grabbing her arm—and suddenly flew across the room, thumping painfully on the kitchen floor. “No!” Maria shouted. “Don’t hurt him, he’s my brother!”

  The witch, Nedra, was standing by the table now, and as Carlos got to his feet, groaning from the hit he’d taken, she bared her teeth. “Fine. Can I at least … escort him to his car?”

  “Gently,” Maria said, and Nedra rolled her eyes.

  “You can’t,” Carlos began, but when he finished the sentence, saying, “do this,” he was staring out the windshield of his mother’s car, parked in the driveway of his house. There wasn’t even a moment of blankness in his mind, no discontinuity of memory: one moment he was aching and bruised in the kitchen, and now he was here, with no pain at all. He got out of the car and rushed to the front door. “Mom, Dad!” he shouted. “You have to help me. Maria is in trouble!”

  His mother was in the kitchen, making pies for Thanksgiving dinner, and his father stepped in from the living room, a paperback book—true crime, probably—in his hand. “Maria,” his mother said thoughtfully. “Is that the girl from your English class?”

  He frowned. Had she misheard him and thought he said Alicia? “No, Maria, my sister.”

  His father grinned. “Ah, you love her like a sister now, is that it?”

  Carlos stared at them. Were they joking? They couldn’t be.…

  “Now, what kind of trouble is this girl in?” his mother said. “Nothing to do with you, I hope.”

  Carlos thought furiously. “Ah, no, her car just broke down, she wanted me to pick her up—could I borrow your car?”

  “You already borrowed my car, two hours ago, to go to the store to get me condensed milk,” his mother said. “Which I see you’ve forgotten. Go, go, just remember the milk when you come back, okay?”

  “You’re a good-hearted boy, son,” his father said, wandering back to the living room. “But don’t let this sister take advantage of you.”

  “I just … let me get my jacket,” he muttered, and rushed through the house. He went past his own door and pushed into Maria’s bedroom.

  Her canopy bed was gone, as were her dresser, her posters, and her bookshelves. The room was now a neat and anonymous spare bedroom, with a layer of dust on the bedside table, as if no one had stayed here in some time.

  Carlos backed out of the room. She’ll just make a few cuts in the heads of their statues, Maria had said. Cutting out their memories? Making it so Maria had never existed?

  The old woman was a witch. Really a witch. How did you fight a witch? Not with silver bullets, or crosses, or garlic. There was some precedent for throwing a bucket of water at her, but Carlos didn’t think that would
work. Except holy water, maybe? Good luck getting any of that out of Father Norris, not with a story like this. Burning and hanging were traditional, but he couldn’t imagine doing that; he didn’t want to kill anyone, just free his sister … who didn’t want to be free. Their parents could be a pain sometimes—but was living with a witch better? Maybe the promise of power was.

  He settled for stopping by the garage and getting the ax his father used to split wood. Maybe if he threatened to cut down her grove of statues, the witch would let him take Maria. It wasn’t much of a plan, but what else could he do?

  “Go ahead,” the witch said, leaning casually on a carving of Mr. Jennings, manager of the grocery store. “Chop away. Which of your fellow citizens are you planning to murder?”

  Carlos frowned, lowering the ax. “What?”

  The witch thumped the statue’s head. “That just gave Mr. Jennings a little headache. The carvings and their subjects are linked, Carlos. It’s basic sympathetic magic. Chop one down, and you’ll kill them, or at least wound them. It might look like they were in a car accident or they got caught in farm machinery, but you’ll be the real cause.” She sighed. “This would be much simpler if I could just slice your memories of Maria out of your head, but she’s adamant. Not ready to give up all her old life yet. She’s stubborn to a fault, which is actually no fault at all in this line of work. What do I have to say to convince you that Maria is better off with me?”

  “Nothing. There’s nothing you can say.”

  She snorted. “Let me try anyway. You’d prefer she got pregnant by some high school boy at seventeen like half your cousins do? Live in a trailer park, get fat, see all her dreams dissolve, watch TV? With me, she can have a meaningful life.”

  “It won’t be like that.” Carlos tightened his grip on the ax and took a step forward. “Maria is smart, way smarter than me, she’ll get out of this town and make a life for herself—”

  “No. She won’t,” the witch said. “No one gets out of this town. Oh, people might take vacations, maybe even go away for two or four years of college. I’m not a monster, but no one really leaves, no one puts roots down anywhere else. Haven’t you noticed?”

  “That’s not true, I know lots of people who’ve left and—” And all come back. He racked his brain for an exception, but the only ones he could think of didn’t live in this town, they lived in one of the next towns over, or in an unincorporated township, and just attended the high school in town. “I … I’m leaving, though. Going to college in California. I’m going to stay there.”

  “Ha,” she said, but without any humor. “I don’t think so. Haven’t you noticed all these carvings are rooted in the ground? That’s to make you stay. How can I keep you people safe if you’re scattered all over the world?”

  “That’s not keeping us safe, it’s keeping us in a cage. Who appointed you the warden of this town anyway?”

  She sighed. “Come with me.” She turned her back and walked deeper into the forest of carvings, and it occurred to Carlos that he could bury the ax between her shoulder blades … but he couldn’t even quite visualize himself doing it, let alone actually take the action. He wasn’t a murderer, apparently. He wished he could take pride in that, instead of feeling vaguely disappointed in himself.

  The witch gestured at a pair of unpainted stumps standing some distance apart from the rest of the grove. They were crudely hacked things, recognizable as human figures but only just, nothing like the eerily lifelike statues all around them. It was almost like there were things trapped in the wood, trying to claw themselves out, but unable to make it more than halfway.

  They were far more unsettling than the more perfect effigies elsewhere in the grove. “What are these, your first attempts?” Carlos said.

  “They were meant to be my husband and daughter,” she said. “My attempt to bring them back from the dead. I had their blood, I had hair, I had—I had pieces of them—but nothing worked. The carvings wouldn’t take. There are some things beyond my reach, things I couldn’t unlock even in my madness and grief just after they died, when the shadows and the moon and the stars and the stones all poured their secrets into my ears and gave me powers. Do you know, they died before your parents were even born, but I still see them both perfectly the moment I close my eyes. They whisper to me from the shadows every day and night, and the pain of losing them, it’s still here.” She tapped her chest. “Like an open wound inside me, infected, forever. They say time heals everything … but there are some things time can’t touch. The way I feel, they may as well have died just this morning. There is no bridging the gap from here to death, not really, and if I can’t resurrect anyone …” She shrugged. “Then I must preserve. I couldn’t save them, but I can save all of you. My husband used to say people in our position, wealthy, influential people, we have a responsibility to the community, and I honor his memory. And now I have Maria to help me. It’s not like having my daughter back—not really—but it’s better than this loneliness.”

  “You’re a monster,” Carlos said. “You have to let people live their own lives.”

  “I do,” she said, rounding on him, eyebrows drawn down. “They have wonderful lives, safe lives. No one has been murdered in this town in decades. There aren’t even burglaries.

  There are barely even accidents, not within the town limits, anyway. So what if you can’t leave? What’s so wonderful about the rest of the world? The rest of the world is worse than our town, I know, believe me, the rest of the world is what took my family from me.”

  “And now you’ve taken my family from me,” Carlos said. “My sister.”

  She made a sharp, dismissive gesture with her hand, like she was chopping the head off an imaginary chicken. “Nonsense. She’s here, and you’re welcome to visit anytime. Most people can’t even find my house—they start down the driveway and walk a while and end up back where they began. But you need to be nice, Carlos. Don’t make trouble for me, or I’ll …”

  “Now come the threats,” he said, with a certain amount of satisfaction. “Or what?”

  “I can’t threaten you or your parents. Maria would never forgive me. But … this is the girl you like, isn’t it?” She put her hand on a carving, and yes, it was Alicia, the girl from English class, the one he’d had a crush on since junior high, and she’d finally broken up with her boyfriend—

  “You wouldn’t hurt her,” he said.

  “I never hurt any of my people,” she said, and then the knife was in her hand, and the little paintbrush. He lifted his ax—just to threaten her—but she gestured at him, and the wooden handle writhed in his hands, sprouting small branches that stabbed at his palms. He gasped and dropped the weapon, and the handle put down roots, transformed into a living sapling with an ax head dangling from one branch like strange fruit.

  “There,” the witch said, and Carlos stared at the carving of Alicia. Her eyes were different, now, with long slit pupils like a cat’s, and her lips were far redder, her face far paler, and she had fangs, bone white and needle sharp—

  “She looks like a vampire,” he said.

  “Mmm-hmm,” the witch said. “Don’t worry, she won’t bite my people—there are plenty of folks who just work in town, or go to high school here, but they’re not mine. She can feed on them. But I’m afraid you might not like Alicia much anymore—there are going to be some inevitable changes in her personality.”

  “This is crazy!” he shouted. “You can’t do this!”

  “There are very few things I can’t do.”

  He backed away. “What do I have to do to make you change Alicia back?”

  “Just be a good brother. Support your sister’s decision. Is that so much to ask?”

  He shook his head. “No. No, it’s fine.”

  “Good. Now go away. I need to teach your sister how to conjure and conceal.”

  He called Alicia, doing his best to make casual small talk, and she said she was fine, that she’d gotten a terrible migraine earlier and had
to lay down in a dark room for a while because the light hurt like crazy, but she was feeling better now. Carlos lay in his own dark room long after night fell, staring up at the ceiling, thinking. Mostly he was thinking about living the rest of his life as the only person in his family who knew Maria even existed. It would be like being haunted by a ghost, but the ghost of someone no one else even realized had died. He didn’t know anything about magic, but he had to do something.

  A few hours before dawn, he went to the garage for a few tools, then took the car, putting it in neutral and pushing it out to the street so his parents wouldn’t hear him start it up in the driveway, and driving out of the subdivision before turning the headlights on. He would have walked—it was only a couple of miles—but he didn’t want to carry all the blades and things on foot that far.

  The witch’s house was dark, which was good, since he’d worried Nedra would be awake, perhaps incapable of sleep. But if she was up and around, there was no sign of it. Navigating the grove in the dark with nothing but moonlight to guide him was difficult, but he did his best, creeping low to the ground, pulling the canvas bag of tools after him. Sometimes it seemed the carvings were moving slightly, or even breathing, and once his eyes adjusted to the dimness he realized almost all their eyes were closed, as if sleeping. That was better, somehow—no sense that they were watching him.

  He’d wondered if he might find the witch’s own likeness somewhere in the grove, but it was too vast, too full of familiar faces and strangers, so he went with his original plan. The wood was surprisingly easy to cut through—either because of magic or dry rot—and the handsaw his dad used to hack off dogwood branches sliced through them easily, showering sawdust around his hands. He even didn’t need the hand ax or the mallet or the wedge. He got a cramp from trying to saw while lying on his belly, and the angle was awkward, and dust got in his eyes, and there were squirming bugs in the wood, but he gritted his teeth and persevered, cutting through both stumps in less than an hour. He would have liked to destroy the roots, but absent a tractor or explosives that wasn’t going to happen. He’d have to hope this was enough.