Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron Read online

  Borbos turned as we burst in, and a piece of the chamber ceiling fell straight down, bruising my left shoulder as Great-Grandmother sprang me out of the way. In her turn, she made my tongue say this, and my two hands do that, and Borbos was strangling in air, on the other side of the chamber, while my hands clenched on nothing and gripped and twisted, tighter and tighter … but he got a word out, in spite of me, and broke free to crouch by Jashani’s bed, panting like an animal.

  There was no jauntiness about him now, no mocking gaiety. “You are no witch. I would know. What are you?”

  I wanted to go over and comfort Father, hold him and make certain that he was unhurt, but Great-Grandmother had her own plans. She said, “I am a member of this family, and I have come to get my great-granddaughter back from you. Release her and I have no quarrel with you, no further interest at all. Do it now, Borbos Tresard.”

  For answer, Borbos looked shyly down at the floor, shuffled his feet like an embarrassed schoolboy, and muttered something that might indeed have been an apology for bad behavior in the classroom. But at the first sound of it, Great-Grandmother leaped forward and dragged Father away from the bed, as the floor began to crack open down the middle and the bed to slide steadily toward the widening crevasse. Father cried out in horror. I wanted to scream; but Great-Grandmother pointed with the forefingers and ring fingers of both my hands at the opening, and what she shouted hurt my mouth. Took out a back tooth, too, though I didn’t notice at the time. I was too busy watching Borbos’s spell reverse itself, as the flying kitchenware had done. The hole in the floor closed up as quickly as it had opened, and Jashani’s bed slid back to where it had been, more or less, with her never once stirring. Father limped dazedly over to her and began to straighten her coverlet.

  For a second time Borbos Tresard said, “Well, my goodness.” He shook his head slightly, whether in admiration or because he was trying to clear it, I can’t say. He said, “I do believe you are my master. Or mistress, as you will. But it won’t help, you know. She still will not wake to any spell, except to see my face, and my terms are what they always were—a welcome into the heart of this truly remarkable family. Nothing more, and nothing less.” He beamed joyously at us, and if I had never understood why so many women fell so helplessly in love with him, I surely came to understand it then. “How much longer can you stay in the poor ox, anyway, before you raddle him through like the death fever you are? Another day? A week? So much as a month? My face can wait, mother—but somehow I don’t believe you can. I really don’t believe so.”

  The bedchamber was so quiet that I thought I heard not only my own heart beating but also Jashani’s, strong but so slow, and a skittery, too-rapid pulse that I first thought must be Father’s, before I understood that it belonged to Borbos. Great-Grandmother said musingly, “Patience is an overrated virtue.”

  And then I also understood why so many people fear the dead.

  I felt her leaving me. I can’t describe it any better than I’ve been able to say what it was like to have her in me. All I’m going to say about her departure is that it left me suddenly stumbling forward, as though a prop I was leaning on had been pulled away. But it wasn’t my body that felt abandoned, I know that. I think it was my spirit, but I can’t be sure.

  Great-Grandmother stood there as I had first seen her. Lightning was flashing in her empty eye sockets, and the pitiless grin of her naked skull branded itself across my sight. With one great heron-stride of her naked shanks she was on Borbos, reaching out—reaching out …

  I don’t want to tell about this.

  She took his face. She reached out with her bones, and she took his face, and he screamed. There was no blood, nothing like that, but suddenly there was a shifting smudge, almost like smoke, where his face had been … and there it was, somehow pasted on her, merged with the bone, so that it looked real, not like a mask, even on the skull of a skeleton. Even with the lightning behind her borrowed eyes.

  Borbos went on screaming, floundering blindly in the bedchamber, stumbling into walls and falling down, meowing and snuffling hideously; but Great-Grandmother clacked and clattered to Jashani’s bedside, and peered down at her for a long moment before she spoke. “Love,” she said softly. “Jashani. My heart, awaken. Awaken for me.” The voice was Borbos’s voice.

  And Jashani opened her eyes and said his name.

  Father was instantly there, holding her hands, stroking her face, crying with joy. I didn’t know what those easy words meant until then. Great-Grandmother turned away and walked across the room to Borbos. He must have sensed her standing before him, because he stopped making that terrible snuffling sound. She said, “Here. I only used it for a little,” and she gave him back his face.

  I didn’t really see it happen. I was with my father and my sister, listening to her say my name.

  When I felt Great-Grandmother’s fleshless hand on my shoulder, I kissed Jashani’s forehead and stood up. I looked over at Borbos, still crouched in a corner, his hands pressed tightly against his face, as though he were holding it on. Great-Grandmother touched Father’s shoulder with her other hand and said, impassively, “Take him home. Afterward.”

  After you bury me again, she meant. She held onto my shoulder as we walked downstairs together, and I felt a strange tension in the cold clasp that made me more nervous than I already was. Would she simply lie down in her cellar grave waiting for me to spade the earth back over her and pat it down with the blade? I thought of those other bones I’d first seen in the grave, and I shivered, and her grip tightened just a bit.

  We faced each other over the empty grave. I couldn’t read her expression any more than I ever could, but the lightning was no longer playing in her eye sockets. She said, “You are a good boy. Your company pleases me.”

  I started to say, “If my company is the price of Jashani … I am ready.” I think my voice was not trembling very much, but I don’t know, because I never got the chance to finish. Both of our heads turned at a sudden scurry of footsteps, and we saw Borbos Tresard charging at us across the cellar. Head down, eyes white, flailing hands empty of weapons, nevertheless his entire outline was crackling with the fire-magic of utter, insane fury. He was howling as he came.

  I automatically stepped into his way—too numb with fear to be afraid, if you can understand that—but Great-Grandmother put me aside and stood waiting, short but terrible, holding out her stick-thin arms. Like a child rushing to greet his mother coming home, Borbos Tresard leaped into those arms, and they closed around him. The impact caught Great-Grandmother off-balance; the two of them tumbled into the grave together, struggling as they fell. I heard bones go, but would not gamble they were hers.

  I picked up a spade, uncertain what I meant to do with it, staring down at the tumult in the earth as though it were something happening a long way off, and long ago. Then Father was beside me with the other spade, frantically shoving everything—dirt and odd scraps of wood and twigs and even old wine corks from the cellar floor—into the grave, shoveling and kicking and pushing with his arms almost at the same time. By and by I recovered enough to assist him, and when the hole was filled we both jumped up and down on the pile, packing it all down as tightly as it would go. The risen surface wasn’t quite level with the floor when we were done, but it would settle in time.

  I had to say it. I said, “He’s down there under our feet, still alive, choking on dirt, with her holding him fast forever. Keeping her company.” Father did not answer, but only leaned on his spade, with dirty sweat running out of his hair and down his cheek. I think that was the first time I noticed that he was an inch or so shorter than I. “I feel sorry for him. A little.”

  “Not I,” Father said flatly. “I’d bury him deeper, if we had more earth.”

  “Then you would be burying Great-Grandmother deeper, too,” I said.

  “Yes.” Father’s face was paper-white, the skin looking thin with every kind of exhaustion. “Help me move these barrels.”

 
; CROW AND CAPER, CAPER AND CROW

  MARGO LANAGAN

  PEN WALKED A long time back and forth, clacking the shells in her pocket. The light was harsh and yellowish, the clouds were like smoke off some disaster, and the sea had a nasty impatience about it, waves crossing one another and throwing their hands up. But now was the moment. All day its imminence had hummed in her skull; she had scratched at her head, stirring her hair up wilder than ever. The whole world had gone soft today and started shifting—it was time for Pen to do the little she could to nail it back into shape.

  Four walnut-shell halves she had, all perfect, saved from Christmas. She herself was full to the brim. She had taken no strong drink in the year since the wedding. She had been eating well, was plump as a Christmas pig, in fact, for the voyage. And she had stretched and run and swum in the sea and climbed the hills; she was fitter than she’d ever been. She wouldn’t have done this just for herself, but for a child, for a grandchild, she could turn herself into that machine, well oiled, well tuned, and with its battery charged to the full. She must, in fact, for there was no one else of her blood who could do this thing, who could make this journey, and bless the child as it should be blessed.

  She readied her powers, admiring the powerful sea, the gathering darkness, the last yellow light leaking and sulking in the clouds. She felt ahead for the moment. It eased toward her, but she was too far gone into her plan to feel excited about it; she must be practical now and bring to bear all her eye and instinct and old, old skill.

  She had stopped pacing without even noticing, had stood back from the water. Foamy wavelets raced up and reached for her toes. Now she took a shell and, bending down, laid it on a ripple. She uttered a Word and pulled from the shell an improbable boat—still walnut shell and no mistake, but with a mast to stand and cling to, and a seat athwart it to sit and croon upon when standing grew wearisome. There was a little flag from the top of the mast, a pennant, yellow, with a golden star; this would give her courage. The whole construction bobbed lightly as bubble-weed on the wavelets. It looked fragile and unbalanced, but it was made entirely of her own devotion and willfulness, and both those things, she knew, were strong and steady.

  She stepped aboard, or the boatlet took her on—it was hard to tell and it did not matter, for the boat was part of her, after all. And she set out, first lifting and dropping and calculating a way through the waves, remembering how to balance, then moving faster and more smoothly across the less broken water, as much like flying as floating. Her boat had no sail, and the wind did not blow her; she was her own prevailing wind, and always the pennant flapped behind, pointing the way she had come. She had looped her mind around the arriving grandchild and now she was reeling herself in. The water had only the merest shading of green now, and the light was fading further. Soon there would be just these small scrolls and rolls of foam on the blackness. Then, if the clouds persisted, the foam would vanish, too, and she would only feel the tap and punch of wave tops against the shell-boat’s breast in her feet and hands if she stood at the mast, in her spine if she sat against it—and the clamp and release of her magic, automatic as a sleeper’s breathing, hurrying her through the night.

  What did I do? she had asked Rowan. Whatever did I do that you would go so far away?

  Nothing, Ma! He’d laughed and hugged her. It’s the job; it’s the opportunity. And Sophie—

  And Sophie, she had said heavily.

  No, all I meant was, Sophie says it’s a great chance and we ought to go after it. She’s going from her mum, too, you know, her mum and dad and her sisters and all her family. It’s not all about you.

  But some of it is. She dislikes me.

  She’s only frightened. Lots of people are; you know that.

  Pen had looked up into his kind face. She was about to hurt him, but she must speak anyway. I had hoped you would find a woman who wasn’t one of the fearful.

  They must be very rare, he’d said. Because I looked, Ma; you know I did. But I couldn’t look forever.

  You are still so young—

  Mum, I love Sophie for what she is. I can only care so much about what she’s not.

  She had admired him; he had seemed rather noble. But she had mocked him to herself, too: He only doesn’t mind because he’s young, she’d thought. Give him time, and years catering to Sophie’s limitations, and he will understand me, understand the mistake he is making.

  Morning climbed up behind her into the stars, and the streaky clouds grew gaudy with it. An albatross glided in angled flight low to the waves; some dolphins rose and fell past her as if they were fixed to some huge invisible merry-go-round. Tired, cold to the bone, Pen could no longer think; she had been pummeled all night by wind and water, and felt bruised from head to toe.

  She came to land. The boat tipped her onto the beach, and she stamped about on the hard sand, waking herself, getting her land legs, watching the boat shrink back to walnut size and be overwhelmed by the next wavelet. Then she walked up the softer beach and followed a path through the dunes. On the far side lay a road, and a man was just opening the shop opposite. A line of houses stretched out either side of it, beach shacks, their lawns neatened for the summer.

  Pen plucked a leaf from a hedge and used it to pay for a drink, for a packet of biscuits. She sat on the dew-damp iron seat outside the shop, and chewed three biscuits, and drank the drink; it was like eating mouthfuls of sand and washing them down with sweetened bilge water.

  When she had eaten, she did her stretches. People came to the shop to buy their milk, their bread, their newspapers, and looked sidelong at her mad sea-blown hair, her dark, odd clothes, the strange postures she was taking up against the seat, against the shop wall. Families with small children, carrying bright towels and gaily colored floating toys, came walking along the road and turned down the path to the beach. “Good morning,” said these mums and dads determinedly, and the children stared and reached for their parents’ hands. Pen had no wish to frighten children, but if their parents raised them to be fearful there was not much she could do about it.

  She chose a quiet moment and slipped in among the dunes. When she was all alone with the wind in the whistle-grass, she took out a walnut shell and with a Word and a sweeping gesture threw it into the careless sky. There it blossomed into a craft somewhere between a hawk and a microlight, but still keeping something of the woodenness and knobbliness of a walnut about it. She laughed with fondness for it and reached up her arms, and the thing swooped down and picked her up in its claws or its clamps or its breast, whatever it had, and carried her off over the country.

  Pen looked ahead. The knowledge opened like a fat flower toward her from the middle of the continent. “She is born! She is born!” she cried, and already she was too high for people to hear her or to think her more than a distant bird. She felt a great joy, very pure—perhaps the purest she had ever felt. It was purer even than when she had carried Rowan inside her and brought him forth, for that joy had always been shadowed by fear, fear that she would fail him somehow, fear that he would hurt her by coming to harm himself. This granddaughter was at a safe remove from her; Pen could never do wrong by her. Nothing was required of Pen, not even love if she did not want to give it—but she did, of course; it flowed up and out of her like springwater, refreshing as it went.

  There was still a good distance to be covered. Exulting, she flew on, over the land of her granddaughter’s birthing. Oh, it was a beautiful thing, a country from above, like a masterpiece painting. You could see how it had come to be, piled and pushed up, and then blown and washed down, worn to plains and then through to gorges. It was subtly colorful and delicately patterned; everything that was so ugly when you were down among it seemed from this distance nicely worked, and human effort seemed rather dear and hopeless, even though it had cleared and scarred and excavated such great tracts of land, ruined them every which way. Dammed and channeled waters winked, traffic beetled along the many roads, cities hung in their shawls of smog. In
between the clumps and blotches of smaller towns, crops lay golden and green, and dark plantations flowed over the hills. Only a few areas had been left raw, allowed to stay irregular in their forms and growths, and these gave up a thin power, which Pen drew on instead of her own store, much reduced from her night’s paying out aboard the boat.

  She was warm in the breast feathers of the walnut-hawk; they were like very thin roof shingles, and they rattled musically about her ears and stung her hands and arms with their flapping. If she pushed her face forward to crane after something she had just passed below, the cold went into her forehead like an ax blow, and pained right down her face to her teeth.

  It was a very long day, because she traveled west. Midafternoon she began to seek out on the ground the features she had marked in her memory to tell her the way: the dogleg in the river, the three towns making a triangle, the cloverleaf where the highways crossed. When they came, she ticked them off one by one. She had not traveled a distance like this for a good while, not since she was in love as a girl—why not, when it was such a pleasure, the sensations and the sights, when it was so simple, really, if she prepared herself?

  She dropped into an orchard of some kind; the fruits were hard and green, some kind of citrus. Her feet set down in sunny grass—that was nice, being in touch with the earth again. The walnut shell fell through the fruit-tree leaves behind her and patted to earth, too.

  The hospital was not far away. She walked out to the highway, picking money from a tree as she went. She sat awhile at a bus stop, and then a bus came and took her to the edge of a car park, and on the other side the hospital loomed, enormous, white, and glassy, with somewhere inside it her granddaughter, and beside the girl, her mother.