Cat Magic (46 page)

She had asked that same question of Constance. From this side it was a bitter question to hear. “I know that I love you.”

“Quit patronizing me! I mean, what happened to you? What did you find out?”

She wondered how she could ever tell it. If death is truly what one makes it, then there was little to say.

“Something’s out there,” she said. He raised his eyebrows. “Surprise is important. I can’t deny you that.”

Robin held out his hands to her. She went to him, but she was little comforted by his stiff, nervous hug.

“Tell me anyway.”

“There is another world. It grows out of the mind when it is freed from the body. When you die you find your conscience waiting for you. It cannot lie. If you suffer then, it is because you choose to do so. If you go on into the highlands, it is because you feel ready to accept the joy of heaven.”

“Am I ready?”

She could see so easily into his soul Like her own, his guilts seemed terribly small. He was unsure that it was right to leave his parents, and he worried about not being able to provide for them in their old age.

She slipped her hand into his. “You should reconcile yourself with your parents. Growth for you lies in the direction of understanding how you really feel about them.”

“We’ve come to a pretty good understanding already.”

She heard the lie. But it was not her place to correct him. He had to travel his own path. “Robin, I have so much to tell you. I relived our past together.”

On the surface he barely heard her, so preoccupied was he by what he imagined as the distance between them. But his essence heard, and looked out of his eyes with graceful eagerness. “May I know?” he asked. The acid in his voice, so contrived, seemed silly to her, but she did not laugh.

“You didn’t choose the name Robin by accident. It’s been your name before. We were lovers a long time ago, when I had a house in the forest.”

How they had loved, in the warm Sherwood nights, when the cat watched from the branch, and the stars coursed beyond the treetops. “I don’t remember.”

Oh, but she knew that was a lie. He did remember, and very well. She saw it in his eyes. “The log palace? The fairy? The coming of the sheriff of Nottingham?”

“You’re telling me I was Robin Hood?”

“Yes. You were Robin Hood.”

He looked askance at her. He smiled just a little.

“You really were.”

He burst out laughing, and when he did the wall between them fell at last. He kissed her easily, and there was hunger in it, the real hunger of essence seeking essence. “Oh, Amanda, I’m so glad you came back!

We tried all night, we raised the cone of power, but nothing seemed to help. I worked and worked and worked and I was sure I had lost you. Then the
Leannan
came and a little while later there you were!”

He was covering her face with kisses now, and they were kisses of passion. “You’re so beautiful, I love you so much, I didn’t think I could live without you!”

She delivered herself to his embraces. They went back into the bed and she drew down his pants and underpants and opened her robe to him. There, in the secrecy of the curtained bed, they made furious, shaking, gleeful love, laughing and kissing as they did it. She opened herself to him and let him seek the center of her pleasure.

When he spent himself, she attained a level of ecstasy so intense that for an instant she blacked out.

Afterward it was as if the rich dark of her womb was vibrating, announcing the presence of new life.

They had conceived a baby just then, she knew. But that as for another phase of life in the Covenstead.

Just now, would keep her condition a secret.

They lay awhile, linked. She followed his semen on its journey, feeling it struggle up her fallopian tubes, a swirling, struggling cataclysm in the dark, until finally one bright speck of him reached the egg, and there burst forth a light that sang. The connection to the egg held, and a new voice jabbered up in her. She smiled, beatified by her womanhood. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Of course.”

She saw how thin was his real ability to do this. Keeping a secret is one of the most difficult of disciplines.

“You must keep it for about three days. Can you do that?”

“Certainly. Come on, tell me.”

“You made it,” she said. “I just got pregnant.”

His eyes widened. “How—”

“I felt it all. The whole thing.”

He fell on her in a wild excess of passion. “I was scared of you, my love. I was scared to death, but you cured me of it. You opened me up somehow.”

“You opened yourself up. When you saw there was still room to laugh.”

He laid his mouth on hers. She touched him all over, feeling every delicious inch of him.

Robin’s kiss went on and on, lingering now, probing now, seeking in the miracle of their joined selves.

Finally he cuddled beside her. There came from him a whisper so soft it was almost unarticulated… a thought. “Was it just dark, death? Were you telling me the truth?”

She hugged him. “You can look forward to great wonders.”

He went up on an elbow. “I still can’t believe it. You actually came back to life. This is a scientific fact.

And you have memories, knowledge from the world of the dead. This is incredible.”

She had to forgive him; he did not mean to make her feel lonely. “The better you know yourself before you die, the better off you’ll be.”

“Is there a moral order? Such a thing as sin? Is there a hell?”

“As far as moral orders are concerned, we make our own choices. We are our own judges. And we are never wrong.”

“So, like, if Hitler
thinks
he’s doing good, then he goes to heaven? Is that right?”

“After death, all illusions fall away. We know ourselves, exactly as we are. I think I had a glimpse of Hitler.”

“In heaven?”

The memory so thoroughly revolted her that she almost screamed. “No.”

Tom’s head appeared between the curtains. For a moment the two of them just looked at it. It was much too far from the floor, and he certainly wasn’t dangling from the canopy.

“Is there a chair out there?” Robin asked nervously.

“Not that I recall.”

Tom extended his tongue and slowly, sensuously, licked his chops.

“He must be—he has to be—”

“I think it’s his idea of a joke. Don’t let it upset you.”

“The cat is floating in midair and you tell me not to get upset! Jesus! Scat, damn you!”

Instead Tom came in, rolling and playing in the air.

“I think he’s celebrating.”

He floated past and out the other side of the curtains. Robin was silent for some little time. Once or twice he started to talk. Then he shook his head. “As I recall,” he said at last, “you like pancakes.”

“This is truth.”

“Would you like some now?”

She regarded him with deep fondness. “Would I ever.” They both dressed, and she brushed her hair and washed her face, and they went down to the kitchen. She had expected light and activity, but the room was cold.

“They’re all down at the village,” Robin said. “They’ve a feast for you. As you might imagine, there is a great of excitement. Only the Vine Coven’s really greeted.

“I barely remember coming down the mountain. I was terribly tired.”

“You walked like a zombie.” He hesitated at his own words, then looked away, as if he had unthinkingly called attention to some deformity of hers.

The two of them went out into me morning.

There was more than one veteran in Simon’s congregation. His call had been heard, as a matter of fact, by no fewer than seven vets, three of them tough young steelworkers on indefinite layoff. All had been trained in modem infiltration techniques during the Vietnam War.

At Betty Turner’s request the command post was in her home. Simon sat before his makeshift desk in the family room, which had been renamed the Operations Room.

“I got the radios. Brother,” Tim Faulkner said. He put a big box down on the floor. “Just what the doctor ordered. Three hand-held CBs, all tuned to the same channel.”

Charlie Reilly tromped in with a map, which he proceeded to unroll against the wall. “Give me a hand, Tim, I want to tape this thing up.”

Simon had never seen such an elaborate topographical map. It showed contour in great detail, brown lines against me various shades of background color.

“This is the National Guard ‘63 update of the Geodetic Survey map of the Maywell Quadrant,” Reilly said. He and Tim Faulkner finished taping it to the wall.

It brought a military look to this headquarters. Simon took pleasure in the calm and professional atmosphere. He had been trying not to think about the hand coming to life. It was almost the only thing he
could
think about. Either it was a miracle to proclaim or a spell from which he must protect his people.

But which?

“Davis is down at the County Courthouse,” Deputy Peters said, “getting me blueprints of the Collier place. Once we have those we’ll be ready to get this operation set.”

Eddie Martin spoke up. He was wearing green army fatigues and a camouflage flak vest. “I want to develop a mission analysis with detailed operational orders. And I don’t want anybody handling weapons or gasoline who doesn’t know what they’re doing. We’re not a bunch of assholes. We’re organized, we’ve got structure, and we’re in the right. So let’s act that way.”

Even Simon’s original men had acquired new efficiency. He had little to do but watch. The martyrdom had filled his people with the grace of God. How he loved these people, deeply, abidingly, with his whole soul. They would help themselves and the witches, too. Let the poor people suffer in this life so that they would be happy in the next. Only one person among them all would not be going to heaven. Such was his joy and his deep, inner sadness that Simon wept quietly, the tears moving coldly down his cheeks. He sat bunched at his card table, nervously touching what was in his pocket.

The witches’ barn was crowded. In the center was a great circular table, heaped with all kinds of food.

People stood round it or sat on the floor. When Amanda and Robin came there was an intense stir, suddenly hushed. Amanda was not surprised to see Constance a miserable shadow of herself sitting off in a comer. She would need much support and reassurance. Her fate was upon her, visible to Amanda as a sizzling, burning finger that pointed directly at the center of the old woman’s skull.

“Connie?”

When Constance met her eyes, Amanda knew at once that she was aware of it, too.

After a life lived between the worlds, the old woman was afraid of death. Connie’s black ravens stood in a line along and above her.

Amanda made her way through the silent, watching crowd of people to her benefactor. She sat down on the floor in front of her. “Connie, how can I help—”

“I’m not afraid of death. It’s pain.” She saw Connie burning in agony, her ravens swarming, their wings dipped in blue flames.

“Oh, Connie!”

“Whisper!”

“Can’t you stop it? There must be some way, surely.”

“When my fire burns, I’ll be there. Nothing can change it.”

Amanda saw that. The closer the future comes to the present, the more possibilities become probable.

Then they become inevitable.

Connie smiled, a study in sadness. “Nature must feed, Amanda.”

“Yes, Connie. You can lean on me now. You can tell me all your fears. Nothing is hidden from me.”

Constance seemed to sag. In her eyes there was incredible gratitude. “I need you. I’ve needed you for years.”

She would have taken the old woman in her arms there and then, but a woman came up, offering Amanda a bowl of sweet yogurt, all but bowing and scraping. Constance looked very sad. “It takes an independent spirit to do magic. They won’t be witches long if they become your followers, young woman.”

“I don’t want that.”

“You certainly don’t! They’re awed of your knowledge of death, but they all have the same information hidden in their hearts. We just forget it for a little while, so don’t take advantage of your fellowman’s poor memory.”

“I’ll try not to.” Rather than have the woman grovel there, she took the proffered bowl and ate it while the whole of the lo Coven, who managed the dairy, looked on with pride. “It is human nature to seek the confirmation of princes,” she said. “That’s why royal families are forced to spend so much time making inspections. I can teach them not to regard me as a royal person.”

“Let them be in awe of you, but let them make their own decisions. It’ll be hard, especially when you can see farther than they can. But they must learn from their own mistakes.”

“I know. We can’t teach people anything. They have to have their experience.”

Constance moved her hands beneath her dress and brought out a blackened, ancient garter. “This is yours,” she said. “I’ve been keeping it for you.” And so, without ceremony, she was being offered the very garter of Maidenhood. She recognized it of old, and took it. The leather was very, very old, as black as carbon. The clasp was of bone. Dimly, as if she were an echo of a cry, Amanda remembered Moom. Moom’s laughter, Moom’s pain, Moom’s courage. She had given birth to six children and died before she was fifteen.

Moom had owned two garters. And so had Marian.

“Where’s my other garter, Connie?”

Constance waved her hand. “Lost to fire during the time of Innocent VIII.” The room was stuffy, the smell of the food heavy. Two children, Ariadne and Feather, actually knelt when they brought a plate of pancakes.

Amanda knew that she had to act, and quickly, to avoid becoming the resident Goddess-Queen. It was right for the witches to have a queen, but she must be no more than first among equals.

She held up the garter. “I’ve been given this. It belongs to the Covenstead and it can only be worn by an initiated priestess. Am I right?”

There were murmurs of agreement.

“Fine. Initiate me just as you would any apprentice. And if you elect me, I will wear your garter to the best of my liability.” She thought of Moom, who would have tom any woman apart who had tried to take this garter. And Marian, to whom the sacrilege of removing it was unthinkable. She put it in her pocket and took Connie’s hand. “You want anything from the table, Connie?”