Mistle Child (Undertaken Trilogy) (7 page)

“All right, Mother Peale, I am sure Dolores didn’t mean anything by it,” Mrs. Bowe said, softening her tone. “All we are asking for is—”

Dolores closed her eyes briefly and waved her hand in the air as if brushing away a fly. “Be assured I meant precisely what I said. If you think I am going out during the dinner hour to stand around the pond with a candle, singing old songs with you two, I fear you have come in vain. Ladies, good day.” She reached over to the table for the little silver servant’s bell.

“Dolores Umber, you can sit in this house and play Lady Muck all you like, but I am telling you, Silas needs you. You don’t have to like what he does, or what Amos did, but you know the real dangers of that work and you must help if you can,” said Mrs. Bowe tartly.

“Dolores,” said Mother Peale more softly, “you are his mother. Surely for that and no other reason you will consider helping us help Silas?”

“So, you would speak to me of a mother’s sacred duty? And Mrs. Bowe, you of all people who yourself spurned a more ordinary life? Who couldn’t be bothered to take a man and get married and have children of your own? Ladies, I need no lessons in mothering, thank you.” But her expression was already changing to one of concern. What was happening to Silas? What had he gotten himself into?

“All right, all right!” said Mother Peale, trying to calm the rising temper of the room. “You can help him or not. I am not entirely delighted by these doings, Dolores, I assure you. If you don’t wish to help, Mrs. Bowe and I can speak the words right enough, but, Dolores, having you there, having your voice joined with ours, it will help him, I promise you. If we stand together.”

Dolores’s mind was turning over and over on itself. She looked at the two women. Here was Old Lichport, already trying to kick down her door with its talk of witchcraft! She wanted no part of it, even though such things were woven right through her family. She was about to ask them both to leave, but she considered: For them both to come, and to this house, whatever was happening must be serious. She knew neither woman was especially fond of her, but Dolores knew they loved her son. And so did she. Things had been better. Hadn’t Silas sat through those long nights with her recently when sleep was so scarce? She imagined that if she said no to them, it would come out eventually that Dolores Umber was the kind of mother who wouldn’t stand up for her boy. She was not that kind of mother. She was trying so hard to . . . All right, she told herself. Let’s get it over with.

“Ladies. I understand. I do not approve of your methods, but there is nothing I wouldn’t do to help my son. I will come.”

Resolved, Dolores rang the little bell. Mother Peale looked at Mrs. Bowe and rose to go. A young woman wearing an apron came in from the kitchen and stood at the door waiting for instructions.

“Please set the table. We will have a little something to eat, nothing too fancy, and then, I’ll need my heavy coat. I will be going out this evening with these two old, dear friends of my son’s.”

By the time they’d talked a bit more and eaten, it was long after sunset. Only the thinnest wisps of fire hung in the indigo sky as the three women slowly walked through town to the millpond.

Mrs. Bowe looked relieved that Dolores had come. She said, “Shall we go over the particulars once more?”

“Please, Mrs. Bowe. I may not be Lichport-y enough for you, and I may have left this town once—and gladly, too, I might add—but I ask you to remember that mine is an ancient family. I know all the witch-runes and curse-signs like any daughter of Lichport. Just because I’ve turned away from such relics, such distractions, doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten the sewers of lore that flow under these streets. I know how to get what I want, same as any woman. I know the routine, I promise you. You will speak some hoary, primitive poetry. We will bend our collective wills toward the place of binding. Mother Peale will make some knots in a piece of filthy rope or some such bit of arts and crafts, and I will set my ungloved hand to the ice to trace some peasant’s sigil and ruin my manicure. I assure you I have not forgotten the particulars.”

The millpond was still frozen. At the edges, tall weeds, brown now, stood cold and unbending in the light breeze, their stalks sunk down into the ice.

As Dolores approached the pond behind Mrs. Bowe and Mother Peale, she said in an annoyed voice, “I’ll catch my death out here!”

“Don’t say such things when the veil has grown so thin!” snapped Mother Peale.

Then with no more than a nod, the three women stood abreast at the edge of the millpond.

Mrs. Bowe closed her eyes and inclined her head.

“She’s still down there.”

“Good,” said Mother Peale. “Let’s begin.”

The three women joined hands. The words were simple and quickly became a chant. “She shall not rise. She is bound to this place. She shall not rise. . . .”

Then Mrs. Bowe added other words. The boundaries of the spell closed in and the power of the binding grew tight and firm, like the twisting of a rope.

“She shall not rise. There shall be no dreams. He shall not dream. He shall forget her name. He shall not dream of the waters. No dreams . . . ,” Mrs. Bowe intoned as Mother Peale let go of Dolores’s hand and drew out a length of cord into which she began tying knot after knot to hold the spell. “There shall be no dreams. He shall not dream. . . .”

But the words died on Dolores’s lips. Those words would bind her son as well. No dreams. He would not dream, that’s what they were saying.

“Stop,” said Dolores.

“Do not interrupt!” barked Mother Peale.

Mrs. Bowe raised her voice and kept right on intoning those words. “She shall not rise. He shall not dream. She shall not rise. He shall not dream.” And Dolores knew it was wrong. They couldn’t take her son’s dreams from him. Life could deal you a miserable hand, but you could dream of something more, something better. Sometimes dreams were all a person had. She knew that better than anyone. So she waited until the two women looked at her and nodded that it was almost over. Dolores removed her glove. The freezing air stung her skin. She kneeled in the hard, icy mud, and drew a glyph with her fingertip, splintering, as she had predicted, the end of her painted nail. As she had traced the sigil, she said out loud, “You shall not rise to harm my son! You shall not rise—” And then, deep below her breath, she whispered, “But he shall dream whatever he wishes to dream. In his dreams he shall be free.”

Mrs. Bowe and Mother Peale did not hear Dolores’s final words, but instantly, the ice cracked with a sound like thunder, and water oozed up, flooding out onto the frozen surfaces. Dolores fell back from the edge of the pond as Mrs. Bowe and Mother Peale stepped forward and pulled her up, the three joining hands once more. In one voice, they called out, “Child of the waters, we bind you to your bones. Do not rise! Do not stir! Drink lonesome water and remain below. Sink down! Sink down! We bind you to your bones. We three bind you. By ice, we bind you. By cold, we bind you. By the wills of the Wailing Woman and the Mother of the Narrows and the blood-kin of your paramour, we bind you! By the will of Three, you are bound!”

And the wind rose into a blast, and the green water froze thick and hard again across the pond.

The air grew still. Dolores was trying to catch her breath. Mrs. Bowe took a piece of wool tartan she’d been wearing as a shawl and spread it on the cold ground and the three sat down together, breathing hard. Mother Peale took out a tinderbox and built a small fire to keep them warm while they waited and recovered themselves. It might have been nearly dawn by the time they began making their way home.

Mother Peale looked at Dolores, then at Mrs. Bowe, with concern coloring her face.

“It will be all right,” said Mrs. Bowe.

Mother Peale hoped those words were true, but the wind had changed direction, coming in hard now from the north, and she wasn’t so sure.

Their words would hold. All their words would hold. But because of Dolores’s whispers, down below, at the dark cold bottom of the pond, Beatrice slept, but began to dream again, sending her sunken mind out beyond the boundaries of her watery prison house. And Silas wanted to dream of her. His mind called to her through the lashings of the binding spell. While she could not rise, and his waking memory would remain a blur, in sleep she would find him.

T
HE SUN WAS COMING UP
and Silas hadn’t slept all night. He stood on the porch of Mrs. Bowe’s house, waiting. She hadn’t come home last night. That had never happened once during his time living next door to her. Most days, Silas could tell the time by what was occurring next door. Specific kitchen sounds and smells signaled breakfast, lunch, teatime, and dinner. Regular. The sound of music and dancing almost always came on around eleven p.m. Humming came from the garden in the early morning and often an hour before dusk.

Watching the street, Silas could feel in his gut that something was going on and secrets were being kept from him. While Mrs. Bowe did regularly leave the house now, it still felt wrong for her not to be in at night. At least she might have told him where she’d gone. Usually, when he left to work, he would tell her his destinations, just in case anything were to happen. But now his fretting made him feel like a hypocrite because he’d barely spoken a word to her all week. The worst part was, he suspected that her absence had something to do with him. There was a ringing in his ears, and he convinced himself it meant someone was out there, someplace in Lichport, saying his name. And Silas didn’t like secrets. So here he was, his mind full of assumptions, standing watch on Mrs. Bowe’s front porch, waiting to question her the instant she came home.

It was cold in the open air, and Silas pulled his jacket collar up to lessen the biting wind on his neck. He could hear a dog barking somewhere off by the park near Cedar Street. He was thinking about going back into the house when suddenly he saw Mrs. Bowe, Mother Peale, and his mom come out from behind some buildings and emerge onto Main Street. Silas watched as the three of them paused at the intersection of Main and Fairview, Mother Peale continued south toward Temple Street with his mother and out of sight. Mrs. Bowe stood watching the other two for a moment, before she turned back to Main and walked toward home, where he was waiting for her.

Silas was expressionless, blocking the threshold as Mrs. Bowe ascended the steps from the street to the front door of her house. She looked at him and said, “Good morning, Silas,” as though everything were perfectly normal.

“Good morning?” Silas said. “You’re gone all night and all you’ve got for me is ‘good morning’?” But he heard the sharpness in his tone, and spoke more softly, adding, “I mean, I was worried about you. I don’t like thinking about you wandering around all night and no one knowing where you are. You’ve never been gone all night before—”