Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron Page 27

  “Maybe they won’t be here then!” she snarled, and she slammed down the tray and began stuffing muffins in her mouth. Her cheeks and her eyes bulged as she tried to chew. Then she started choking, spraying chocolate crumbs all over the spotless floor, dribbling chocolate drool down her apron front. Her face was purple and terror shot through me. I pounded her on her back, terrified she might die. But she gave some explosive coughs and then collapsed heavily into a chair, burying her face in her hands.

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” she wailed. “I try so hard but it’s never enough and never the right thing. It was the same with your father. You can’t wait to grow up and get away, and then I’ll be all alone. I could die and no one would know or care.”

  “Mama, I won’t leave you! I won’t ever,” I promised hysterically. I grabbed a muffin and shoved it into my own mouth, chewing frantically, tasting the sticky, rich sweetness.

  “Did you keep your promise?” asked the kid, and I realized she was holding my hand again. My mother and the kitchen had disappeared, and we were standing in a little round room with dusty black and white paving stones laid out in an eye-watering geometric configuration on the floor.

  “I … you saw that?” I said, reeling from the vividness of the memory or vision. She nodded. “Was I a kid again?” I asked. She nodded again. I blew out a breath of air, the fright and emotions sinking into a strange heavy feeling of sadness that I always felt whenever I thought about my mother and her life. Slowly I said, “It was real. I mean, it happened. But why did I remember it? What was the point?”

  “Maybe it was to make you forget about finding the egg,” the kid said. “It’s not here.”

  We went back out and mounted some more steps. “I did,” I said. She looked back at me. “I kept my promise, and I’m still keeping it, even though my mother died years ago. I never left home. I lived there until she died, and I still live in the same house. I never moved out.” I said the words, wondering if it could really be true, that this incident in the kitchen had been the moment I had decided never to leave home.

  The kid said nothing, the way kids can and adults can’t, and I was grateful. We went on till we came to another spar of steps that brought us to the next door. This one was lacquered red and shiny like a Chinese puzzle box. I hesitated, wondering if there was another memory behind it waiting to ambush me. The door swung open with a whisper, and this time there was a muddle of light and noise coming through it. I entered and found myself at a party. People were standing around talking and laughing. There were servants with little trays of canapés and others with trays of half-filled champagne glasses.

  “Hey there!” said a voice, and I turned to find myself looking at Emily, the wife of my first employer. She was a small, rounded, very pretty woman with a soft voice and straw-pale straight hair, cut with a perfectly straight fringe à la Alice in Wonderland. She was wearing a neat blue apron over a blue dress, and her pale glossed lips were curved into a smile, but her eyes were anxious, urgent. “Is Mike with you?”

  “He’s … he is coming along later in his own car. He got caught up in a meeting,” I said. I didn’t say he had gone off to play golf, sending me in his place to his eldest daughter’s thirteenth-birthday party.

  The anxiety in his wife’s eyes turned to weary disappointment and for a moment the smile faltered, but she sucked it up and asked me brightly if I would like a drink.

  “I’ll just put Mr. Willot’s gift in with the rest, shall I? He didn’t want it not to be here if the present opening happened before he got here, so he asked me to bring it with me.” I was gabbling because I could see she knew her husband had ordered me to get something appropriate and had sent me, knowing that he would not arrive before the party was over. She knew that she and his kids were window dressing for his life as a banker. I wished I’d had the courage to refuse him so that I could have avoided seeing the pain and humiliation in her eyes as she turned away.

  “My father isn’t coming, is he?” asked a familiar voice in a clear grammar school accent. I turned from the gift table to face Amanda Willot. She was tall and slender like her father, pretty like her mother, but with a sharp cleverness that showed in her eyes and manner and that made her more striking than them both.

  “Hello, Amanda,” I said. “Happy birthday. You father got caught up, but he says he’ll try to be here before it ends.”

  She gave me a look of cool dislike. “Does he pay you to tell lies for him?”

  I swallowed and thought, I will never let this happen to me. I will never be that wife being lied to or the mother who has to watch her daughter learning to hate her father. Better to be alone. Better never to trust anyone.

  “Is it?” the kid asked, and we were standing in a vast empty ballroom with two cobweb-draped chandeliers. The kid had laid her hand on my arm, and it struck me that her touch had ended both visions.

  “Is it what?” I asked.

  “Better to be alone? Better not to trust anyone?”

  I looked at her. “You can hear what I am thinking?”

  “Only when you’re remembering,” she said.

  I shifted away from the kid, unsettled at the thought of her having access to my inner monologue, unsettled by the visions I had experienced, both of which seemed to show me making decisions I had not realized at the time I was making. I had always felt as if I had been sidelined by life, cheated out of the things other people seemed to get as a matter of course. Was it possible I had chosen the course of my life? And what did any of this have to do with the demon and an amethyst egg? Unless the kid was right and the whole point was to get me caught up in analyzing the past.

  “Let’s go,” I said. Outside there was a red blush on the horizon; if that was east, and if this place obeyed at least some of the laws of the known universe, it meant the Dreadful Dawn was approaching. I looked at the kid. “Can you feel yet where the egg is?”

  “Up,” she said.

  We got almost the whole way to the top before she pointed to a glass door at the end of a short set of steps running down from the main stair. Once again the door swung open as we approached, but this time when we stepped inside, I reached out to take the kid’s hand. I thought I had figured out that it would stop me having a vision, but instead I found myself in a kitchen I didn’t recognize. There was a small child with a shaggy mop of hair playing with a rag doll under the table. I realized I was under the table with the kid. Suddenly two sets of legs came in, one after the other. Both wore suit trousers and shiny black shoes.

  “What about the kid?” one man said.

  “Welfare will take charge until they sort it out with the relatives. They’re not keen on getting involved. Can’t hardly blame them for thinking twice about taking on the kid of two drug addicts.”

  “Some kids got no luck.”

  “You never know,” the other said. “Maybe the parents taking off and leaving it is the best thing that could have happened. Sounds cold, but who knows what would have happened if they’d stayed around. I mean, parents that would leave a kid like a sack of clothes they didn’t want.”

  “Pity the relatives won’t step up,” said the other man.

  The kid sitting beside me looked at me with eyes that were a pale honey yellow at the center, running to butterscotch at the edges. It was the kid from the plane. Her eyes were so sad it made my chest ache. I reached out to rest a hand on her shoulder, and the kitchen vanished, leaving me standing in a cramped sitting room with two dusty mismatched sofas pushed against the walls to form an L.

  “I was under the table playing with Rosa when the men came in,” the kid said. “They were from the government. One of them took me to the home and I stayed there for a long time because I was too old for anyone to want. Then one day the man came back. He told me my mother’s sister had decided to take me after all. He said she and her husband felt it was their duty to take me. I said I didn’t want to go, but the man said I was a kid and kids have to do what adults decide is for the best. T
hen he put me on the plane.”

  “What a prince,” I muttered.

  “It’s close,” she said in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper. She went back outside, and we both stopped dead to see what we had been too intent on our purpose to see before. We had finally climbed high enough to rise above the roiling murk. It lay below like a blanket of dark clouds seen from a plane window. All around were high mountain peaks, and above them the sky was a very clear and dark blue on one side, running to red and purple on the other side.

  “The Dreadful Dawn,” said the kid.

  “Not quite,” I said. I turned to her. “Where now?”

  The kid pressed a skinny hand to her heart again, and then she pointed down. Only then did I see there were metal rungs set into the side of the building, going down to a gaping hole of the kind you see in bombed-out buildings. There was fear in her eyes, but it was not fear of harpies and the Dreadful Dawn. It was the greater fear of abandonment; of being left behind. I knew I ought to leave her because whatever lay in the hole below was nothing good, and every bone in my body said you didn’t take a kid with you into a thing like that. Nor did I subscribe to her view that staying together was safer than being alone. Hadn’t I built a life out of being alone because that was better than being eaten alive by someone else’s needs? And wasn’t it the kid’s need that was sucking at me now like quicksand?

  But somehow I found myself saying, “I’ll go first.”

  The gratitude in the kid’s face was so intense it pained me. I forced myself to concentrate on climbing because it was a lot of years since I had done it and the rungs were coated in a greasy slick that made me afraid of slipping. There were fifteen rungs down to the level of the hole blasted in the side of the wall. I stepped into the rubble gingerly. A second later the kid swung in like a monkey and beamed at me. I turned to squint into the murky darkness, all too conscious that if the witch had meant it about the harpies coming at dawn, we would be sitting ducks.

  “I’ll show you,” said the kid eagerly, and before I could stop her, she had darted ahead. Cursing, I followed, stumbling over the broken stone underfoot and wrenching an ankle painfully. Limping on, I opened my mouth to hiss at her to slow down but then saw that she had entered a cavern rather than a room. There was a great hole in the floor, and rising from the near edge was a plinth of white marble cradling an oval of amethyst as small as a regular egg but faceted. The kid reached out to take the egg, and immediately the facets began to pulse delicate flashes of violet and lavender. The color was so beautiful it ravished my senses, and I felt a jealous hunger for the egg take hold of me.

  I looked into the kid’s face expecting to see my own possessiveness reflected there, but there was a different sort of hunger in her face. Her eyes were bright with pride as she came toward me, holding the egg out to me reverently.

  “I am sorry to interrupt this touching little scene, but I am afraid that belongs to me, ladies, and I suggest you put it back where you got it,” said an urbane masculine voice with just a hint of laughter.

  We both turned to see a form rising from a brown armchair with the stuffing boiling from a slash in one arm. The demon king, I thought, and my heart gave a great salmon leap of fear. But when the form stepped into the light cast by the amethyst, it was a tall and extremely handsome man clad in a charcoal sports jacket, a Neo Tokyo T-shirt with a Japanese motif, gray jeans, and loafers. His hair was very short and he was clean-shaven, but when he smiled again I saw the flash of a black stud on his tongue.

  “You are the demon king,” I said.

  He smiled. “I am, and you are yet another thief sent by the hags.”

  “I have come to take back something you stole,” I said evenly.

  His brows lifted and his smile widened. “Just like that?”

  I drew a shaky breath and reached out to scoop the egg from the kid’s hands. I looked down at it and that was a mistake, because when I managed to look up again the demon had the kid, and although he was still handsome, there was an ugly look in his eyes.

  “Let her go,” I said.

  “The hags lied to you. They will never turn you into one of them. That is witchkind for you. They are all about themselves.”

  “The witch said—” I began.

  “Yes, yes, that you were chosen because you had special abilities, yada yada. You didn’t fall for that, did you? I mean, no offense, but look at you. They offered power to a weak, powerless woman, and they backed it up with a threat. A terrible death versus magic powers. Hmmm, tough choice.”

  “You are lying,” I said.

  “I lie often and well, but I can also tell the truth if it suits me. Did the hags tell you the witch I took the stone from had originally stolen it from me?”

  “You’d say anything to get your hands on this.”

  He laughed, revealing perfect white teeth. “My dear woman, do you really imagine I can’t simply take it from you, even using this weak human form? You are middle-aged and fat, and you were never fit. And this form you see is only the form your mind has cloaked me in, because it is too weak to see the truth. But you are correct, of course. I would lie and cheat and murder to possess the egg. Indeed, I have done all of those things for far lesser prizes. But in this case, the truth should do nicely. The witches are using you, and when you bring this to them, you will be returned to the plane crash. End of story. Literally.”

  “In the movies, the bad guys always talk too much,” the kid said suddenly.

  The demon king smiled down at her, but I saw her wince and realized he was digging his fingers into her shoulders. Only for a moment his fingertips looked like claws. The egg pulsed in my fingers, but I managed not to look down. I looked instead at the plinth on the edge of the hole and wondered why the demon had asked me to set the egg back on the plinth. Surely he should desire to have it safe in his hands.

  “Do as I have said, while there is time,” the demon said, and this time there was the hint of a snarl in his pleasant voice. I looked up to see that his brown eyes had gone red, and his smooth hair had lost its sleekness. He smiled, and my blood ran cold to see that his white teeth were now pointed and the dark stud on his tongue looked bigger.

  “Okay. Maybe you are telling the truth. Let the kid go and let us get to the ground on the other side of the moat, and I’ll give it to you,” I said. “But you have to promise to return us to the airport before the plane takes off.”

  The demon’s eyes flared. “I will return you, but first replace the egg on the plinth. Do it now, or forfeit the child.” He nodded to the hole. “That goes directly into the void.”

  I saw acceptance on the kid’s face and knew she was thinking, as I was, that Rose had said a familiar could be sacrificed. As I looked back at the demon it suddenly struck me that I didn’t like kids because their vulnerability scared the crap out of me.

  “What makes you think I would exchange a kid whose name I don’t even know for this?” I held up the egg in one hand. “I hate kids. And what makes you think I will give it to the witches, either? That is what I told them, but once I can figure out what to do with this, I will deal with the witchfolk.”

  I had been moving closer to the demon as I spoke, and now, without warning, I tossed the egg at his face. He threw up his hands, gave a guttural scream that had more bird than human in it, and reeled back, only to stumble into the hole. The kid overbalanced and fell backward, too, but I was already diving forward. I caught one of her flailing hands in mine. She was slight, but there was enough weight in her to bring me thumping painfully to my knees at the edge of the hole.

  “Take my wrist with your other hand,” I cried, for her small hand was slipping from my grasp.

  She shook her head, and I saw that she was holding the amethyst egg in her free hand. “Take it,” she said, holding it up, eyes shining with triumph.

  “I can’t. If I let go of one hand, you’ll fall. Throw it up and take my hands, quickly!”

  “What if it breaks!” she said. />
  “Better it than you. Now come on!” I screamed.

  She threw it, and it gave a great blinding pulse of light as she caught hold of my hands. Immediately I adjusted my grip and hauled her up laboriously until she could scramble the rest of the way. We both lay on the edge of the void for a second, panting and gasping. Then the kid’s expression changed, and I knew from her stricken face what I would see when I turned.

  The amethyst egg lay in small pieces, all of them dull.

  “That’s that, then,” I said as red light speared into the grotto.

  Rose was waiting for us at the foot of the steps. On the other side of the moat, Jasper stretched out on the ground with his massive head resting on his paws. The fog had long gone, and the plain stretched out dead and black in all directions, the early morning light giving it a reddish brown tinge that reminded me unpleasantly of congealed blood.

  “I failed,” I said.

  “No,” said Rose. “You got the amethyst egg from Chagrin before the Dreadful Dawn.”

  “But I broke it,” I said.

  “The child broke it,” Rose said mildly. “We saw what happened because of the eye you carried.”

  “How could it see anything in my pocket?” I asked.

  “It is a metaphorical eye,” the witch said impatiently, as if I ought to have known that. “You were clever to work out that the demon could not bear to touch the egg. Chagrin defeated those who came before because they did not reach the egg. But instead of walking away when you had it, you chose the child over it.”

  I glared at her and asked, “So what happens now?”

  She chuckled.

  “Now you go back to the real world and learn to see it through the eyes of a witch. Then the real work will begin.” Rose dropped her hand to Jasper’s head, and just like that, we were all standing on the little path leading to my front door. The cottage, bathed in golden morning light with its little garden full of roses and lavender and the twisted lilac bush, humming with bees and glistening with spider threads, had never looked lovelier.