The Witch at Sparrow Creek: A Jim Falk Novel (12 page)

The witch, Wylene, said, “Beside the stool is flint and
tinder. Light the fire! Light the fire, Preacher! Light the fire quick!”

Vernon snapped up the flint and tinder and clacked them
together. The fire sprang up and he looked in the corner and yelped.

An image was there, burned into the wood of the wall.
The image was broken, wild, and raggedy with claws at the end of each arm. It
moved. Vernon turned his eyes to Wylene, who was sitting up now and staring in
the direction of the weird image.

Vernon’s mind was in a whirl.

“Preacher,” the witch said and straightened herself up.
Standing now, she stumbled and leaned against the wall. “There’s an evil here
in this place. There’s an evil in the land of this place. It’s woke up. It’s
woke up and it’s looking for something. Something that I cannot see. It’s waking
up to find it. It’s old, Preacher. This evil thing is old, older even than
these woods, or this mountain.” She paused and looked far away off into a distance
somewhere beyond the walls of the dark house. “Older even than me.”

Vernon was at a loss. He sat down in the dirt and pulled
out his book of the scriptures. Wylene looked at the strange bundle of papers
in his hands.

“You may find a way in those writings,” she said and
moved toward the stool. She plopped down on the stool, exhausted. “You may not.”

Vernon started to cry.

“Find the stranger, the outlander, and tell him what
you saw here tonight. Tell no one else. No one. Not even the magician.”

Vernon screeched at the woman, “Can’t you do something?”

“Nothing,” she said and poked at the fire with a stick.
She chuckled a little. “There’s nothing I can do. This thing, the evil thing,
it will destroy us all. There is nothing I can do.”

She smiled a sad smile and put her right hand to her
mouth to cover her smile. She had no thumb on that hand.



She ran in with a cup of coffee for him, shutting the
door behind her. She could hear her pa talking quick and quiet to Violet Hill
in the other room.

His right hand was wrapped up in the bandages, and another
bandage was around his head. He was sitting up at the edge of the bed, and his
shirt was dirty with mud and the blood was crusty on his bandages. She wanted a
clean shirt for him.

His eyes were clear and deep and blue when he looked
up at her and said, “May.”

“Yes,” she said and handed the white cup to him. “Pa
wanted me to bring you a strong cup of coffee.”

Jim Falk took the cup with his left hand and before taking
a sip asked, “Who saved me?” He took a sip. It tasted good to him. “This tastes
good,” he said. “Thank you. Who saved me?”

“Mr. Falk, Pa can tell you everything as soon as he’s
in here,” she said.

“My hand,” Jim said and looked at his right hand—“who
put the bandages on me?”

Jim tried to stand up, but there came up a dizziness
in his head. He saw in his mind the canopy of the rainy forest again in the
night and felt for a moment the hot breath of the wolf against his face. He sat
back on the bed and looked around the room, his mind wandering over the events
that occurred.

“Who was that?” He looked at May. She was there, sitting
on a little stool by the bed stand. On the bed stand was a bottle. She looked
clean. Her square face and her high cheekbones looked strong, her eyes were
wide looking, thoughtful.

“Well,” May said, “the doctor who came to take care of
you, his name is Doc Pritham, and he put the bandages on you and left with me
specific instructions for your care. One of the main ones is that you shouldn’t
go trying to stand up so fast right away like that.” She looked at him and
couldn’t help but smile, but then she hid it fast. He was back to looking at
this right hand with the bandages on it. Then he looked up at her again and they
were both quiet for a bit.

“Pritham?” Jim said and blinked and looked down at the
foot of the little bed.

It was late afternoon. Some birds outside were chirping
in a gray and muted way. There were no windows in this little room and the
light came in from the main hall and from the little oil lamp on the side table.
There was a warm feeling in the room, a comfortable heat, and the smell of
medicine was coming from the brown bottle on the side stand beside May. May’s
eyes flicked between Jim’s and the bottle, and the oil lamp, and a little brown
cup there with it.

“What’s in the bottle?” he asked, motioning toward it
with his left hand.

Questions began burning up in the back of his mind. Where
was his pack, his gear, the leaves? “Where are my things?”

She looked at the bottle and then back at him. “Your
things? All your things are safe. We’ve got them here. Your gun and everything.
Benjamin Straddler brought everything back with you.”

“Benjamin Straddler?”

“Mr. Falk,” May said and her big eyebrows came together,
“Benjamin Straddler is the man who brought you out of the woods and down in to
here. He brought you straight to us. He’s the one got the doctor along to get
you all bandaged up.”

Jim blinked slowly, taking that in. “What’s in the bottle?”
he asked again. A stinging pain had started in a gentle way in his right hand.
He could tell that it was only going to get worse. Too, he was having troubles
in his memory. He couldn’t remember certain things.

Just then, Huck Marbo appeared in the door. “Mr. Falk,”
he whispered, “you should lie back down. You should be resting. Once you’ve had
your coffee and taken your medicine, you should lie back down and I’ll fetch
the doctor.”

“Where’s my gear?” Jim said loud.

Huck put his hands up as if to shush Jim and said, “Now
don’t get excited, it’s not good for your condition, you’ve been attacked and
had a hard fall. Your gear and things are safe and they’re here in the shop.
I’ll have May fetch them for you, but please, for now, just lie back down and
rest.”

“Huck!” a woman’s voice called from somewhere in the
shop. “Huck! I don’t have any time to wait for you!”

It was clear that the woman was angry. Jim Falk looked
sideways at May. The voice sounded like a voice that he thought he remembered
from somewhere.

Huck Marbo shot a look at his daughter and off he went
in the direction of the voice.

“He’s quick,” Jim said and smiled a little smile—something
about that woman’s voice though, and he was tired now. May was looking at him.
He should lie back down on the bed and rest his head. Violet, he thought—that
was Violet Hill’s voice.

May stood up and quietly shut the door back closed.

“The doctor told me to tell you to stay on your back
and to rest as much as possible.” She paused and rolled her eyes to the left, trying
to remember. “And you have to drink a jigger of this medicine three times a
day. The doctor said that if you have a prayer that you know, it would be a
good idea to say it each time before you took the medicine.”

“A prayer?”

“Yes, he said that is important to the cure.”

“The cure?”

“That’s what he said.”

“That’s what he said?”

“That’s what he said.”

She poured the elixir into the tiny brown cup. She handed
it to him and he sat up again and took it in his left hand.

“It’s good medicine,” she said and a smile appeared on
her square face.

“I want to talk to this doctor.”

Jim smelled the medicine in the cup. It wasn’t pleasant,
but somehow it smelled strong and safe. He’d heard of this Pritham, but he
couldn’t remember where or when. His head was cloudy with dulled pain. Something
of the smell reminded him of Old Magic Woman. Something of the smell touched
his spirit. He took it in one swallow and looked at May.

Her eyes were so deep.

Violet saw Huck’s back in the door. He was gesturing,
making some sort of quiet talk, but it looked like something important.
Violet’s eyes narrowed and she tried to see through him into the room.

What lost her was how Bill and most everyone else in
the town could be so blinded to the spook, the demon, whatever it was. She turned
to her cup of warm whisky and took a drink. He was a good man and he was a
smart man, but she couldn’t understand.

He’d seen it. He’d seen it for sure, and for that matter,
so had some of the others. She thought of Jim Falk’s strong face—that light
that was coming out of it as he rambled up the road with the spook’s head in
the bag. He’d seen it. He said he’d killed it. Had he seen it?

Bill hadn’t seen it, even when it came at him,
shuddering across the kitchen and taken him by the head and back.

“There’s a bear in here, Violet!” Bill shouted and blasted
shot from his shotgun, shattering wood and glass in the little kitchen.

It was too much for her mind right now. She was pretty
sure that it was him—that it was the outlander, Jim Falk, in the back. It was
too much for her to think about right now, and she had to get these items back
to Bill and she had to get back up to the house. She slid off the stool and
steadied herself. She thought of the stranger in the woods who had given her
the powders. “Take these that you might use them against the foe, to call the
one who is to save you.”

She went back behind Huck’s bar and poured herself some
more whisky. She drank it and swallowed it heavy and fast.

She staggered more. The color left her face and she coughed
a bit.

She went down on her knees.

She clutched at a leather strap around her neck and pulled
up the locket that she wore around her neck. She opened it. It was empty. Her
hands suddenly trembled as she stuffed it back in her shirt, but not at once,
and not without taking a serious look into it and licking it again to be sure.
She was sure and it was empty.

“Huck!” she cried at his back. For a moment she choked
quietly and then called stronger than before, “I don’t have any time to wait
for you!”

Jim swallowed the medicine in a big gulp.

“That customer sounds impatient,” he said to May.

The doctor’s medicine warmed his stomach and his mind.
He watched May getting up and smiling at him and getting ready to leave. There
was something he wanted to say to her. He felt so grateful. The throbbing in
his hand faded away and soon he found himself floating along a green sky, a cool
wind breathing over his body, and then stars and smells of campfire. He was
seated by Old Magic Woman’s warm fire outside her tent. She was telling him a
story.

“My grandmother was Matrune and she told me of the Big
Flood when I was just a girl. My grandmother was said to be misshapen by her
past and frightening to look upon. She wouldn’t come out of her little cave when
she talked to me. She made me stand at the edge away from her. She made me burn
sage all around me. She wanted to see me. She wanted to sing me her song. She
wanted to sing to me her life song, to tell me before she faded from the world.
She did not want me to see her, but she wanted to tell me her story. I stood
with my back to her. She told me how the big water came crashing and how many were
destroyed.”

Old Magic Woman’s hands and fingers waved and
rippled out in front of her. “All of them killed by the big, running waters.
There were two enemies, though, that came and protected her. It was hard for my
grandmother to tell this story.” She stopped and looked deep into the fire, her
eyes changed and lazily closed as though she nodded, as though the fire told her
something, and continued.

She sang:

“When the morning stars were shining

Shining were the people’s faces

Shining faces by the River

Shining water in their eyes

When the Pishta came from Wydder

They who brought the dying
hunger

They who made the brothers
sickness

They who made the forest sickness

They, the Pishta from the Wydder

Weak we were the River People

When we called out to Sky Father

When we cried will no one save
us

From the sickness of the Pishta.

“But when the water came, when the great one, the Father,
sent the waters, Matrune was protected. She had special favor with the Sky
Father. Those who protected her took her to a safe place and she slept for a
long time in the darkness. She would wake in the dark where it was hot and they
brought her food. She said the food was dead things and that it tasted of fear.
‘Matishne,’ she would say, ‘It
was
fear.’ Her voice was very old, but it
was strong and sweet.”

She sang:

“The water rushed and crashed and
pounded

Many Pishta drowned in waters

Crashed their bodies into nothing

Water monsters ate their insides

Yes, the water monsters ate
them

Many Pishta drowned in waters

Many of the people died there

Many dead were in the water

Sky Father when he saw the
terror

Heard his children’s blood
cry Father!

He cried tears the more and
flooded

More and more with tears of
sadness

All the world was drowned in
mourning

Mourning Father for his children

Mourning for the world beneath
him

Mourning for his little children

Katakayish of the River.

“Matrune did not know how long she slept, but the hole
where she was grew smaller and smaller and, as much time passed, she began to
see a little light. The colors in the hole changed. It was dim and dark, and then
it became purple and then blue and then green and then, after that, she was
able to see where she was. Deep in the rocks in a cave. And her once handsome
and strong protectors were there, but they had become misshapen and hideous
monsters. They stood at the cave’s entrance. They were demons. They became that
way from eating all the dead fear in the darkness. Matrune saw her reflection
in the black waters. Her skin was white and her hair was black. So long in the
darkness, she had forgotten her own face. She had forgotten almost how to see
light. She had grown and she was naked. But she saw her own face and she saw
that it was beautiful. She took her protectors and stepped into the light of
the new earth. The light hurt their eyes and their skin, and so they went and
hid in the shade of the woods. They hid from the One who sent the terrible
flood. They hid and waited for people and children to return to the earth.
Lonely and hungry, they waited in the darkness and she longed for her people to
return, knowing that they never would.”