The Return of the Witch (34 page)

“And did they tell you the meaning of the name?”

I shrugged, really too tired to be playing this particular game. “That you were the Greatest Witch Living, that your magic was superior to anyone else's, that…”

“Did they tell you that the word
Taklit
is Berber for ‘Slave'?”

I was astonished. “No,” I said. “They didn't tell me that.”

She stood up, unfolding her long limbs, lightly getting to her feet and planting her staff upon the rock. She turned to look at me steadily. “Do you think you are the first? Do you think there have not been others who came here before you, looking to steal away the wisdom and magic of Taklit the Blessed?”

When I opened my mouth to speak she silenced me with a wave of her hand.

“I turned them away. I would have turned you away, too, sent you back into the Deserts of the Dead to walk and walk until the sun dried you to a crisp.”

“But you didn't.”

“There is much magic already inside you. Magic of the elements. Taklit saw this, and knew at once that it was … different. The whispers spoke of what you could be, of what you must be, but you are incomplete.” She paused, and I thought, hoped, she would say more about what this meant, but I dared not question her. It was the surest way I knew of making her clam up. At last she said, “No person can learn when their arrogance cloaks them. No wisdom, no skill, no words of magic can enter their soul while they hold themselves erect, proud, important.” She pointed a long, bony finger at me. “You came here wearing your cleverness like silver armor. Only the humble can learn. Now,” she turned her hand palm uppermost in a gesture toward me that spoke volumes, “now you are reduced. As I once was. Now you are ready to learn.”

And then we began.

Of course I still had to sweep out the tent, tend the animals, and make the flatbreads, but those were only tasks between the lessons. They were the things I now did willingly and quickly so that I could do more of whatever Taklit had decided to teach me that day. My first lessons took place at night because she wanted me to understand the stars. We would sit on the rocks and she would point with her stick, telling me the Berber names for the different constellations and planets, and then testing me on which was which. She explained how the desert nomads navigated by the stars, and how Tuareg witches, such as she was, would only perform certain rituals and cast certain spells when the night sky was the right shape, with everything most auspiciously aligned. Not surprisingly, Taklit was a fairly brutal teacher. She barked at me if I gave wrong answers to her questions, or laughed at me if I said something she thought dim-witted. Even when I was lighting the fire or beating the rugs she would make me repeat, over and over, the names of the stars in the order I would find them. Finally, after nights of stumbling and hesitating, I got them all right. We were sitting by the fire and I named them all, every single name of every single star. I was very pleased with myself, but if I expected praise from Taklit I was going to be disappointed. She just snorted, nodded, and then started eating.

She surprised me the next morning by presenting me with my own staff. It was slightly shorter than hers—of course!—and not intricately carved in the way hers was, but it was made of a beautifully smooth, golden wood. I had no idea where she had conjured it up from, and knew better than to ask. She tossed it to me.

“Is yours,” she said.

I opened my mouth to thank her, but didn't get the chance to speak. Before I knew what was happening she swung her own staff at me. Instinct made me block her blow with mine, but she had put so much force into her swing that the connection rattled painfully up my arms.

“What was that for?” I gasped.

“If a person has a thing, she should know how to use it,” she went on by way of explanation.

“Are you crazy? I don't know how to fight.”

But Taklit wasn't in the mood for talking. She leapt at me, staff raised above her head. I dived to the left as I heard it scythe through the air and thwack into the ground. I rolled across the sand and then struggled to my feet as quickly as I could. I was barely up when I felt the stick land across my shoulders. I cried out as I fell forward. Taklit danced behind me.

“Get up!” she shouted, not keeping still for an instant, weaving and dancing and moving the staff all the time so that I had no idea what her next move might be.

I tried to turn so that I was facing her, tried to follow the sound of the bells around her ankle, ringing as she jumped, but she was too quick for me. With a nimble twirl she brought the unyielding wood smartly into the back of my knees, sweeping my feet from under me. Again I was on the floor, bruised and hurting, my own staff dropped onto the sand beside me. Taklit towered above me.

“You are slow,” she said. “You must get quicker.”

And so we trained, day and night, until my limbs were a psychedelic collection of bruises and all my muscles ached from the effort of leaping and turning and trying to avoid her pretty damn merciless blows. She was relentless. She'd take every chance she got to catch me somewhere harmless but painful—ankles were her favorite. Just as I thought I was getting the hang of at least some defensive moves she would change her tactic and find another way to whack me. Half the time I was almost blinded by the sweat running into my eyes, and dizzy from the all-encompassing heat. In the end it was a mixture of fury and desperation that drove me to attack her. I saw a tiny opening and I went for it, charging at her, thrashing wildly, ignoring the red pain when she wrapped my knuckles or smacked my shins, driving forward until at last,
at last
she was on the back foot. I pushed on, yelling now, Goddess knew what, as I swung and lunged until Taklit lost her footing and went down. Now it was my turn to stand over her. I stood, panting like a sprinter, the point of my staff held at her throat.

“Looks like I got quicker,” I said, before turning on my heel and marching off to sit, pointedly, on her favorite rock.

After that I like to think she took me just a little bit more seriously. Not that she would ever have admitted I beat her, but she did start to talk to me about things. Things like her own magic.

“Tuareg magic is ancient,” she told me one chilly night as we sat watching the fire dwindle to embers. “It is not written anywhere for fools and such like and so forth to find. It is told, from one woman to another.”

I thought of Elizabeth, then, and the pain of missing her stabbed me again. Her mother, Anne, had taught her everything she knew about healing, and she would have passed on her magic, if she had lived. And then Elizabeth had taught me. I understood how Taklit felt about the privilege of carrying that magic within us. Of passing it on. But if I hadn't pitched up, who would she have passed it on to?

“You have not taken a husband,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “Don't you want a daughter to inherit your knowledge?”

She gave a particularly loud snort at that. “Taklit the Blessed will never take a husband. She will not have a child. She will pass on what she knows to those who are worthy of it.”

I knew her well enough not to expect any sort of compliment or praise in my direction. It was enough that she was willing to share anything at all with me. I kept quiet. I sensed she was in an expansive mood, that she felt I had earned the right to something. I had no idea what that something would turn out to be. If I had, I might have started running then and there and not stopped until I had put a very great distance between me and the Greatest Witch Living.

“We are children of the desert,” she said. “The night sky keeps us from being lost. The stars guide us. They also show us the path our future may take. A Tuareg nomad knows the stars like he knows the dunes and the wells of the Deserts of the Dead. His life depends upon it. A Tuareg witch knows the stars in this way, but also she knows their secrets; those things that they can tell us about what is yet to come.” She paused to prod the fire with her foot. A shower of sparks flew up into the darkness, new stars to add to those older than time that glistened and glinted above us. The light from the fire fell onto Taklit's noble and graceful face, while all around her was in deepest shadow. As she spoke her eyes flashed with firelight, tiny flames reflecting in the malachite green of her irises.

“But it is the sun, the Sacred Sun, that is at the heart of every Tuareg witch. We do not fear its heat; we crave it. It does not burn us; it feeds us. Our souls delight in its rays; our minds are lit by its glow. The Deserts of the Dead create and destroy, and the sun is the greatest part of that creation and destruction. If a witch chooses the way of the Sacred Sun she must trust its power. She must believe. She must give herself, must submit freely and totally. Only then will she be blessed with its strength. Its magic.”

As I watched she reached forward and slowly and calmly pushed her hand into the fire. I cried out in alarm and, as a reflex, moved to stop her, but she held up her other hand. I looked more closely. Now I could see that she was not affected by the heat of the flames, and that the fire did not consume her flesh. She appeared totally relaxed and completely without pain. She withdrew her hand and let me examine it. There was not a mark on her. Not so much as an inch of blistered skin.

“How…?”

She raised her eyebrows. “A witch need never ask how,” she said. “The ‘how' is always magic. Better ask ‘which magic' or ‘from where?' for these are the questions that will lead you to understanding.”

“And this…” I gestured at her hand, at the fire, “this is Tuareg magic?”

“This is magic from the Sacred Sun. It cares not if the witch be Tuareg, only that she be worthy.”

“And how do you know if you are worthy?”

She shrugged and leaned back on her elbows, tired of talking now. “If you are, the Sacred Sun will bless you with its power.”

“And if you are not?”

Taklit picked up a small piece of flatbread that was on the cooling skillet beside her. It was soggy with dipping oil. She lobbed it into the flames, where it flared up, crackling and spitting, burning brightly for a few intense seconds, before crumbling to ash, indistinguishable from the rest of the fire.

The next day she insisted we walk west, deeper into the desert than I had been since I arrived. There was not so much as a breeze to take the sting out of the fierce sun, so that within an hour of walking at Taklit's pace I was beginning to wilt. I paused to drink from my water bottle, leaning heavily on my staff. I could happily have downed the whole lot, but as I had no idea how long we would be out, or how far we were going, I had to ration my supply. We marched on. And on. The sun was at its highest when Taklit finally decided we had reached where we needed to be. There were a few rocks, but otherwise nothing but sand.

“Why here?” I asked, sinking to my knees. “Why have we come here?”

Taklit, who looked like she could walk as many miles again before she even broke a sweat, lifted her staff to indicate the vastness around us. “Is a good place,” is all she had to say. She settled herself, cross-legged, not in the tempting shade of a rock pile, but out in the blast of heat that the midday sun was now inflicting upon us. I sat beside her.

“What can you hear?” she asked me.

I listened. Without a wind, such an expanse of desert, such a stretch of emptiness, had little to offer by way of sounds. There were not even any vultures that day.

I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said. “I can't hear anything.”

She snorted. “You are listening as a child listens! Waiting for sounds to fall upon your ears. You are a witch. Listen like a witch!”

I tried again. She was right, of course. I was being passive, and I wasn't properly working with my witch senses. Truth was, the heat, dear Goddess that heat, it reduced me to just so much body and breath and thirst. It seemed to sap me of any strength. Of any magic. How could Taklit be so sustained by it, while it had just the opposite effect on me? I remembered how Ulvi, back in the fabulous freeze of Siberia, had needed to cajole me into embracing the icy waters and the magic they held. I had hesitated then, but Lake Kurkip had transformed me. I had to trust Taklit now. I had to tune myself in to whatever it was that was here. Because it was powerful, I knew that.

And so I listened as a witch, actively, alert, seeking hidden noises and vibrations that might have been noises. I began to detect tiny sounds.

“I can hear a scratching … it's really faint, but yes, from somewhere near…”

Taklit nodded. “A beetle, just there, beneath the sand. He is rubbing his legs to make this sound. What else?”

“A thudding. Very indistinct. Could it be footsteps, a long way off, perhaps?”

“Is a mouse,” she told me. “He is behind that rock there.” She pointed with her staff.

“I can hear his tiny footsteps?”

“No, you hear the beating of his heart.”

I smiled. The idea of being able to pick up a mouse's heartbeat delighted me, though it also gave me a pang of homesickness for Aloysius back in England.

“Listen more,” Taklit insisted. “What more can you hear?”

I tried again, but now the sounds I had tuned in to felt loud inside my head, so that it was harder to detect anything else. I closed my eyes in an effort to focus better. After awhile I thought I could hear a distant wind, though I could not feel it. And then I realized it was voices, whispers. I could clearly hear words, in different languages, some of which I could understand, all talking over one another, growing stronger as I listened. “I can hear voices!” I opened my eyes, eager to share my excitement with Taklit, but she had gone. I blinked, staring dumbly at the place where only moments ago she had been sitting. I had not felt her move nor heard a sound as she left. I looked about me. I could see for miles in every direction, but there was no sign of Taklit. She had simply vanished. I stood up, taking my hat off and dropping it to the ground so that I could run my fingers through my damp, tangled hair. Was she merely playing tricks on me again, or had she truly abandoned me all the way out there?