The Brixen Witch (17 page)

THE WITCH handed Rudi a crockery mug and a spoon. “Drink some tea. It will settle your stomach and help you think.”

Rudi swallowed his frustration and stirred his tea. The spoon was silver, and it had a twisted handle. “This is how Oma knew the spoon was yours.”

The witch grinned. “We did have tea, Gussie and I. And we shared her elderberry tarts. That reminds me….” She rummaged among the things on her little table and produced the package Rudi had given her. “Have one.”

Rudi thanked her and took one of Oma’s tarts. It seemed there was nothing else he could do for the moment.

The witch settled into her chair with her own
mug of tea. “I knows him,” she said, and Rudi knew she meant her servant. “He cannot abide children. He’ll want to be rid of them quick enough.” She took a bite of tart and grinned. “Ahh. Sixty years since I last tasted these. Have another.”

Rudi shook his head. He wasn’t feeling very hungry. “Rid of them? You don’t think he’s … gotten rid of them … already?”

“Oh, no,” said the witch, brushing crumbs from her lap. “Those children are safe as can be. They’re pawns, you know. He’ll need to offer them in exchange for the coin.”

“But we can never let him have the coin!”

“I should say not.” She took another bite of tart.

Rudi struggled to keep his voice calm. “Then how are we going to get them back?”

“We’ll have to think of something,” said the witch. She sipped her tea.

Now Rudi squirmed on the footstool. He found no comfort in this conversation.

The witch set down her mug. “We are a formidable team, you has convinced me. Gussie’s grandson and the Brixen Witch. But we needs a sound plan, and I always find that sound plans take a bit of rumination. We may have only one chance, and haste is our enemy. So now, tell me news of Gussie. She’s feisty as ever, I hope?”

Rudi rubbed his forehead. He wanted to protest
that he was not good at ruminating, but she was smiling at him expectantly, and now she looked like nothing more than a frail old woman hungry for news of a long-lost friend.

He sighed. “Feisty? I suppose so. Though Papa says she’s ornery, and Mama calls her prickly, and most of the villagers are just plain scared of her.”

The witch sat back, satisfied. “That’s the Gussie I remember.”

“She’s told me stories about you, but she never told me that she’d actually
met
you.” Once more, Rudi thought that Oma had kept too much from him.

“Ah, well,” said the witch. “’Tis bad luck to talk of such things.”

Rudi sat up straight. “That’s what Oma always says!”

The witch shook half a tart at him. “She’s right. What would happen once such a thing became common knowledge? You’d be hounded night and day. People would be full of questions, begging you to intervene with the witch for them. Or worse—they’d look at you sidelong, thinking you’ve become a witch yourself, now that you’ve mingled with witchy folk.” She shook her head. “No, one doesn’t talk of visiting the witch. You’ll see for yourself when you gets back.”

If
I get back, thought Rudi, but then another
question came to him. “Is Oma the only person in Brixen who’s met you?”

The witch picked up her mug and blew on her tea. “Anymore. There were others before her, but now they’re gone. ’Tis a good thing you ventured up, crisis or no. Someone needs to carry on the knowledge in that village.”

“You mean me?” squeaked Rudi.

The witch shrugged. “It seems fitting. You are here. You are Gussie’s grandson. You’re not as feisty as she is, but you’ll do.”

Rudi couldn’t argue with any of that. Still, he did not feel equal to the challenge.

“So,” she continued, “it seems you’re appointed to carry on the knowledge in the village. If you tells me what you already knows about the witch, I can tell you what you doesn’t know.”

Rudi hesitated. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be the person to carry on the knowledge in the village. He wasn’t sure he wanted the responsibility.

Then again, why not? Hadn’t he just bragged to the witch about how capable he was? Catching rats, and making bargains with her servant, and now venturing up here alone. Why shouldn’t he be the one to carry on Oma’s task? In fact, now that he thought about it, Rudi decided he’d be proud to do it.

He tried to think. What did he know? He blurted
out the first thing that came into his mind.

“You’re not as fearsome as I expected. But sometimes you do fearsome things.”

The witch set her cup on the wooden table and folded her hands on her chest. “What sorts of things?”

Rudi played with his spoon. “Last year one of our cows birthed a stillborn calf. Mama said we’d angered you somehow, and so you cursed the cow and killed the calf.” He sipped his tea and kept his eyes on the witch.

“Hmm,” she said. “What do you suppose I was angry about?”

Rudi shrugged. “Mama said we should have done something more, once the cow was near her time. We did set out a pitcher of cream, and you took it, but Mama said it wasn’t enough.”

The witch sat back, thoughtful. “Ah, the cream. That were right nice. I hasn’t got room up here for a cow. I remembers that birthing too. I heard the cow in the barn, lowing peculiar-like. Her calf was past help, poor thing. But ’twas nature’s doing, not my own. I gave comfort to the mother, lest her milk seize up, but that’s all. ’Twas not even magic. ’Twas only … a small kindness. A thank-you for the cream.”

Such an explanation made sense to Rudi, and so he tried again.

“In Brixen, people say you send the storms. They say you send three ravens to circle the clock tower, and soon afterward, lightning strikes.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I’m no fool. I knows enough to stay indoors when a storm is brewing. ’Tis more than I can say for some silly folk. To see storm clouds gathering is not sign enough for them. They needs to see the witch’s signs before they come to their senses and run inside.” She shook her head and
tsk
ed, the way Mama did whenever Rudi did something particularly childish.

He scratched his head. “Why do you bother, if we’re such silly folk?”

“What kind of witch would I be otherwise? Brixen is under my charge, and Klausen, and all the villages hereabouts. ’Tis my duty. ’Tis the way it’s always been. You may not think so, but you needs your witch.”

“Sounds like you’re just a midwife, really. Or a philosopher. Not really a witch,” said Rudi, before he had a chance to think.

Now the witch leaned forward in her chair, and the fire flared in the grate. “You think the Brixen Witch is nothing but a little old woman who drinks chamomile tea and takes pity on suffering milk cows? Foolish child! I’ll send a storm if it’s called for, the likes of which would make you shake in
your little farmer’s boots.” Then she sighed. “Or, at least, once upon a time I could.”

Rudi was beginning to understand. The witch was part of the mountain, and a part of Brixen. She presided over their lives just as certainly as did the snows in winter and the sun in summer. Without the witch, the earth might just as well wobble off its axis onto a new—and disastrous—course.

He decided the time for rumination was done.

“There’s a search party,” he told her. “A dozen strong men, here on the mountain. Perhaps they can help retrieve your magic.”

“Aye, I can hear them stomping about out there.”

Rudi blinked at her. He strained to listen, but he heard only the crackling of the fire.

She sniffed. “You cannot hear them. This is my mountain. I can hear my own mountain breathe if I listens close enough. ’Tis like music to me.”

And then a thought sprang into Rudi’s head, and with it came a flood of hope.

“That’s the answer,” said Rudi. “That is how we can defeat him.”

A GIDDY excitement welled up in Rudi’s chest. The idea seemed so simple. So perfect. And it had taken only one word.

“Music,” he said. “We can defeat him with music.”

The witch squinted at him. “Explain yourself, lad.”

“You enchanted the golden guilder once, to make it sing. So your servant could find it, yes?”

“So
I
could find it,” she said. “But I gave it a tuneless, maddening song. So’s he would be repelled by it, despite its power. So that even though he chased you down the mountain and watched you all night, he could not abide touching the coin. Do you think a mere windowpane would be enough to keep him out of your house?”

Rudi swallowed a huge lump as he recalled that
first night, with the golden guilder buried in his trunk and his dear Papa leaning out into the storm, half-asleep. How near had they come to falling into the clutches of the evil servant that very first night? Rudi shuddered to think of it. But he pushed it out of his mind. “No matter,” he told the witch, shaking himself. “It worked. The music had a powerful effect on him, did it not?”

The witch nodded. “That it did. Go on, then.”

Rudi tried to organize his thoughts. “Later, he played your fiddle—the one with a bit of magic hidden inside. To lead away the rats, and then the children.”

“I thought I heard music of some sort.” She narrowed her eyes. “Did he play it well? Having the magic in one’s possession is one thing. Knowing how to use it is something else.”

Rudi hesitated. But he decided that the witch wanted to know the truth. “Yes, mistress. He played it very well.”

“Bah!” she spat. “’Tis no great trick. Any fool with that much magic at his disposal could do such a thing.” Now she shook her finger, and her eyes gleamed. “If I possessed all my magic, I’d have no need for a fiddle. I could make the plainest object sing so pure and clear, the nightingale would hide in shame.”

“I’ve no doubt, mistress,” said Rudi, though his
heart ached. He wished he could pledge to bring back every scrap of her magic, rescue his friends, and make safe the Berg and all the Brixen Valley. But he could not make such a promise. It was one thing to face her servant. It would be another thing to defeat him.

Still, he was ready to try.

“Mistress …” Rudi held his breath for a moment. “Do you have enough magic to make the coin sing again?”

The witch raised an eyebrow. She pulled the golden guilder from her apron pocket and pressed it between her hands, as if warming it. Then she whispered to it, so quietly that Rudi could not make out the words. Setting the coin on the small table, she sat back and folded her hands, waiting.

Then, so faint at first that Rudi could barely hear it, the music came.

The sound grew louder, and louder still, until there could be no mistake. It was the same music he’d heard that first night, when he’d brought the coin down the mountain through the snow and sleet. A tuneless song that sounded something like the wail of a pennywhistle.

Rudi’s eyes grew wide, as did the witch’s grin.

Then she snatched up the coin, muffling its tune.
“
Shhh!”
she hissed, and it fell silent. She tucked it again into her pocket.

But her grin did not fade. “And now, young Rudolf,” she said, “you needn’t try to find my rebellious servant. For
he
will come to
you
.”

Rudi shivered at the thought. Then another worry came to him. “But if he does, how will we find the other children?”

“No doubt you’ll think of something,” said the witch, standing and stretching. “You has good instincts. When the time comes, you’ll know what to do.”

Rudi smiled weakly. He hoped she was right, for suddenly his mind once more felt as blank as slate.

He tried to think. “Can you still hear the search party?” For if he was going to stand outside with the singing coin and wait for her servant to find him, it would be nice to have friends in the vicinity.

She tilted her head and closed her eyes, listening. Finally, she said, “They’re near enough. I expect the coin’s singing will bring them to you as well.”

“What about the other children?” said Rudi. “Can you hear them?”

She listened once more. Then she shook her head, and Rudi’s hopes fell.

“They cannot be far,” she said. “Mayhaps he is using magic to cloak their whereabouts—the nasty fiend. There’s numerous caves roundabout this mountain. None as big and cozy as this one,
but he may have found one large enough to hold a gaggle of children. I suspects my stolen magic is hidden in the same place. He hasn’t got much imagination.”