PART III: CATHERINE

The entire ride home I’m thinking about Max, wondering where he is. He’s most likely taking victims. I will need to consult my pond in order to find him. Maybe it will be easier now that he’s out of the cave. Regardless, I can’t give up.

It’s near midnight when the driver pulls onto my street. Upon entering the house, the first thing I smell is Bregaris’ excrement. In the kitchen, I find my key and a note from Calvin that says:

I fed Bregaris and didn’t go anywhere near the pond. -Calvin

Bregaris is pacing back and forth inside his cage. I open it, and he makes it known he’s happy to see me, licking my face and stepping all over my feet. “Okay, my darling,” I say. Although I’ve got a lot on my mind, I can’t help but smile and pet my big baby boy before I clean his cage.

That night, I have a terrible dream:

I’m back in England, though it appears to be long before I was born, perhaps the 1600s. I’m standing trial, accused of witchcraft. Next to me are four other women, including T’Chuba. We’re in a wooden pen. Our feet and hands are shackled together, like that of a chain gang. A lawyer slowly paces back and forth in front of a jury comprised entirely of men, attempting to convince them of our guilt. The jurors watch the man pace before them. The only words of the lawyer I’m able to understand are “witchcraft” and “enchantresses”. At one point, he motions toward us. The jurors all turn to look. There is fear in their eyes. Sitting in the courtroom is my husband. He looks as real as the last day I saw him alive. Next to my husband is William and my sister-in-law. My brother is comforting Emily and they both look scared.

In the next moment, the scene changes. The four other women and I are now standing outdoors on the gallows, a heavy rope is around my neck. There is a large audience of townspeople, including the neighbor woman who lived next door to the bloodletter. Her arms are crossed, and she’s nodding her head. Olive and her family are there as well. She’s crying and mouthing the words ‘I’m sorry.’ Calvin, William, and Emily are also in the audience, looking fearful. A man is loudly reading a list of our crimes. In the back of the audience, I see Max. He looks the way he did before he was bitten, young and healthy. He’s screaming, “No!” And running through the crowd. He yells, “Catherine!” The crowd holds him back. As he reaches out to me, I hear him shout the words, “I love you!” Just then, the floor of the gallows drops open and we all fall. I feel the rush of air whoosh up around me. Just as the noose tightens around my neck, I wake.

I make myself a cup of coffee. Bregaris hears me in the kitchen and strolls in, rubbing himself against my legs. I nearly fall over. “Okay, okay,” I say. I open the pantry and find the dog kibble and fill his food bowl. I take a gallon of spring water out of the refrigerator and top off his water. Bregaris grunts and eats hungrily. I pick up my mug of coffee and walk downstairs and out the back door. I unlatch the fence and walk inside. The wood sprite is riding the white swan around the pond.

“Good morning, Bolan,” I say.

“Good morning, witch,” the wood sprite replies.

Although he knows my real name, he only ever calls me witch. It’s not meant as an insult. According to Bolan, I’m the only human who has ever laid eyes on him and, because of this, he has a considerable amount of respect for me. The wood sprite looks elegant as he lazes on the swan’s large white wings, gently plucking his santir. As if reading the wood sprite’s mind, the swan paddles over to where I’m sitting by the edge of the pond, drinking my coffee. Bolan is wearing only a pair of short white pants made from the swan’s feathers. The pants were tailored by the clever sprite himself, and they are held together with his own unusually strong hair. Sprites are known for their beautiful locks which grow faster than human hair and can be used to make rope and bind things together when necessary.

“Where have you been, witch?” The wood sprite inquires.

“Do you really need to ask? You’ve known me for over one hundred years. The only place I ever go is to the mountain to see him,” I say.

I’ve told Bolan everything. He knows all my secrets. He knows what happened in England to bring me to America. He knows all about Max and the binding spell. He’s my best friend. He has my secrets and I have his, forever.

Bolan was raised by wood sprite parents who taught him the ways of the forest. The three of them lived in a tree deep in the woods of Canada. His parents traveled miles to escape a war that was raging between the wood sprites and the gnomes. Both Bolan’s mother and father died in a fire that burned down their tree while they slept. In a similar circumstance to my own, Bolan wasn’t present when his parents’ tree home caught fire. He survived, relocated to America, and ended up taking residence near my pond.

“This isn’t the time of year you usually visit your brother. What brought you to the mountain so late in the season?” Bolan asks.

“As you may remember, I’d first performed the binding spell on a mouse before I journeyed to Max’s cave all those years ago to perform the same spell on him. And, as you may or may not also remember, I’d kept that mouse in a box on my bookshelf. That mouse came back to life the other day.”

Bolan gasps. “Oh, dear,” he says. The swan walks up onto the shore. Bolan jumps off its back and puts his santir down gently on the lawn. He walks over and gives me a hug around the neck. Aside from the fact that wood sprites are extraordinarily strong for their size, receiving a hug from Bolan’s small frame is comparable to an adult being embraced by a toddler.

I hug him back and say, “Thank you, my friend.”

“I’m guessing when you got to the cave, you didn’t find your adopted brother there.”

“Correct,” I say. “Now I’m afraid that he’s up to no good.”

“What can I do to help?” Bolan asks as he sits down next to me on the grass and pushes his beautiful, curly hair out of his eyes.

“Do you know how to find a vampire on the run?”

“I don’t have the power to use a body of water like a crystal ball, if that’s what you mean. But, as you are aware, wood sprites do have the ability to speak with all the animals of the forest and, believe it or not, using this natural network we’re able to keep an eye out for just about any living creature anywhere. Shouldn’t you be getting to the store?” Bolan asks, suddenly changing the topic.

I sigh and pick up my coffee mug. “I suppose I should. It’s been days since I’ve been there.”

I walk back into the house and shower and dress. I make my way downtown as I always do. I unlock the door to the store and step inside, turning on all the lights. On the floor is my mail. I pick it up and find an electric bill and a letter from a customer of mine, promising some books she’d come across whilst cleaning a relative’s attic. This is the way I’ve acquired the majority of my store’s inventory.

Above my desk hangs a scimitar in a sheath. The sword was given to me by a customer who offered it as a way of thanking me for procuring a short stack of antiquated medical books he had been seeking. I’d had no use for the books, for at the time I’d dealt mostly in fiction. The scimitar had been in his family for generations. It had a jewel-encrusted sheath and a flawless, curved blade that widened at the end. The handle was made of polished bone. I’d only ever seen the sharp deadly steel out of its sheath on the day he handed it to me. I told him I had no use for it and that I couldn’t take such an item from him. Still, he insisted that I keep it, so I hung it above my desk.

I open the store for business and keep myself occupied by unloading used books from boxes, filling in the blank spaces on my shelves. If a book is particularly popular, I’ll keep multiple copies. Foreign editions and rare tomes are first researched by using a thick collector’s guide I purchase annually. I drop these more valuable books into plastic sleeves and display them on a shelf near my desk.

I have no security system in the store, but there are mirrors positioned on the walls so that from where I’m seated behind the desk, I have a clear view of the rows. It’s rare that I’ve caught someone trying to shoplift, but I have. Thankfully I’ve never had to alert the authorities. In most of the incidences I was able to talk the person into admitting what they’d done. Have I used witchcraft to assist with this gentle persuasion? Perhaps once or twice.

The morning goes by quickly. My usual clientele come and go and inquire as to where I’ve been the past couple of days. I only tell them I took a trip to Virginia to check up on an old friend. They rarely inquire further, as they’re usually more interested in what’s new on the shelves than what’s been happening in my life.

In the afternoon, a father comes in with his adolescent daughter. I ask why she’s not in school and find out that the middle school in town has a half day due to a teacher’s meeting. I consider this an opportunity to perhaps get a visit from my favorite twelve-year-old who also happens to share my late husband’s first name.

By the time lunch rolls around, I begin to consider my options. I pull Calvin’s mother’s business card from my wallet. I call and invite Marilyn and her son to come to the store for lunch. She agrees, and I order a pizza from a restaurant downtown that delivers. At twelve-thirty, after the pizza and my visitors arrive, I put the ‘closed for lunch’ sign in the window. I bring two chairs out from the backroom for Marilyn and Calvin and place them in front of my desk.

“Whoa!” Calvin says as soon as he and his mother enter the store. I turn to see what he’s marveling at. “Is that your sword?” He asks, looking up at the scimitar hanging above the desk.

“Yes,” I say. “A customer insisted that I take it. It’s nothing I wanted.”

“If you don’t want it, can I have it?” Calvin asks.

I laugh. “I don’t think your mother would want you to have a scimitar. It’s very sharp and very dangerous, but it is quite beautiful, don’t you think?”

“I thought he was kidding when he said he had to feed your panther,” Marilyn says, changing the subject. “Calvin’s been known to stretch the truth.”

“I do appreciate you taking care of Bregaris for me while I was away, Calvin,” I say.

“It was easy,” he says, shrugging and helping himself to a slice of pizza.

I open the register and take a twenty-dollar bill out. “This is for helping me,” I say, sliding the money across the desk toward Calvin.

“Oh, no,” Marilyn says, waving away the cash. “He owed you. The least he could do is feed your pet.”

“I insist,” I say, taking my hand off the twenty. Calvin looks at his mother. She sighs and acquiesces.

“Go ahead,” she says. Calvin takes the bill, folds it neatly in half, and slides it into his pocket.

“Thank you,” he says.

“You’re more than welcome,” I say, smiling. “You did me a big favor taking care of Bregaris while I was away, and I appreciate it.”

Calvin’s mother’s phone dings. She takes it out of her purse and looks at it. “Oh, that’s the pharmacy. Let’s go, Cal’,” she says, standing up.

“But it’s only one o’clock,” he says. “Do I have to go with you? Can’t you go and pick up your prescription and come back and get me?”

Marilyn looks at me as if to ask if I mind being left alone with her inquisitive son.

“It’s okay by me if he stays,” I say. “I’d love the company.”

“Behave,” Marilyn says to Calvin.

“I will,” he says.

“Thank you,” Marilyn whispers to me as she exits the store.

“Now,” I say. “You’re going to tell me what exactly was going on that night when those boys were looking for you in my backyard.”

Calvin sighs and slouches in the chair, leaning his head back and staring at the ceiling. “I might have purposely taken the wrong bus home that day in order to get back at those guys.”

“You might have?” I ask, suspiciously.

“You see, those two guys are fraternal twins and they’re the meanest boys you’d ever want to meet. They’d been picking on me every day at lunch because I’m small. They’d put their fingers in my food and push me off the bench while I was sitting at the table and…”

“Did you tell a teacher?”

“I tried, but the teacher on lunch duty was too slow and could never catch them in the act. I wasn’t the only one who got picked on, but I was the only one of my friends who takes the bus home and could get them back for what they’d been doing to us.”

“What did you and your friends do to get them back?”

“Well,” Calvin says, sitting up in the chair and looking at me sideways as if judging if I can be trusted to keep a secret. “My friends each took a couple eggs from home and put together a carton of rotten eggs that I kept in my locker for two weeks. I had the entire carton in a Ziplocked bag. So, at the end of the day, I took those eggs and put them in my backpack and followed the twins onto their bus, but secretly, so they wouldn’t see me on there. It wasn’t hard. The bad kids always sit in the back of the bus, so they got on first and stayed all the way in the back. I sat up front near the driver. I’m small, so they couldn’t see me over the back of the seat. Luckily, nobody complained about the smell of the eggs. Even though they were in a zipped plastic bag inside my backpack, I could still sort of smell them.

“Anyway, those twins behaved terribly everywhere they went, even the bus! They were being mean to kids, and the driver didn’t do anything about it. So, the bus drops them at their stop, which is just a couple streets away from where you live, and I wait until the twins get off, then I get out with a couple other kids. I followed the twins from a distance and saw the house they live in.

“As soon as they were inside, and I was sure they weren’t coming back out, I took the eggs out of my backpack and out of the plastic bag. Boy did those eggs stink! I cracked one open in their mailbox, and it smelled like nothing I’d ever smelled in my entire life! I nearly vomited right then and there. Then I began hurling eggs at the twins’ house. I threw three at the front door and then began pelting the windows upstairs where I assumed their bedrooms were. That’s when I heard a girl’s voice say, ‘Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ I looked up and this older girl with braces was looking out one of the upstairs windows at me. She looked like a girl version of the twins, so I guess it must have been their sister. That’s when I knew I was in trouble.

“I picked up my backpack and began to run. I tossed the last couple eggs at the cars in the twins’ driveway and dropped the carton. I was a good distance away from their house when I heard the door slam open and the two boys come out, shouting and running after me. I looked back and saw one of them slip on the empty carton I’d dropped in the driveway, and the other twin fell over his brother. That was lucky, because they’re both taller than me and can run a lot faster than I can. They must have seen me turn onto your street, but they didn’t see me run into your backyard. I’m guessing they were just walking through every yard, trying to figure out where I was hiding.”

“I see,” I say. “They must have been furious with you the next day at school.”

“They were, but the best thing happened when I saw them at lunch.”

“What?”

“Well, they put a new lunch monitor on in place of the one that was never fast enough to catch them. My friends and I kept talking to this new lunch monitor and asking him questions, and he basically just hung around near our table for the entire lunch period. When the twins came over and started to cause trouble, the new monitor put a stop to it right away. This new guy’s been there every day since, and he keeps an eye on the twins and, since lunch is the only place I see them, life’s been relatively trouble free.”

“Huh,” I say.

“Hey, do you think if I lure the twins into the pond area that you could have Octavia eat them?” Calvin asks.

I laugh and shake my head. “Now you know I couldn’t let that happen.”

“I know,” Calvin says, looking down, disappointedly. “It would be cool, though.”

Calvin’s mother comes back from the pharmacy just as I’m flipping the ‘gone to lunch’ sign in the window back around. She thanks me for watching her son, and the two say goodbye and leave. I finish out the day, going through donated books and making boxes of duplicates to bring to the library.

When I get home, it’s still light. It’s a clear night, and I’m dying to try and use the pond to find Max. I drop all my things on the kitchen table and walk downstairs and out the backdoor and into the fenced in area. I kneel by the water and begin to chant.

Amazingly, I find Max with ease. I assume it’s because he’s no longer within the cave’s walls. I see him pull a book from his pocket and immediately recognize it as the same book I left on his person over twenty years ago. It was his favorite as a boy. For a moment, I’m touched by this. In the next moment, however, I see him walk into an apartment and attack a young man, killing him and taking his money. It’s impossible to tell when this incident took place, but since it’s been about a week since I discovered the reanimated mouse, I assume the incident has occurred within the last seventy-two hours. I watch Max leave the young man’s apartment. I don’t recognize the neighborhood. There are lights on the residential street he’s walking down, but the sky is dark, and I’m unable to see the surrounding area. This could be anywhere.

I watch Max hitchhike near a highway entrance. He’s standing next to a green sign with white lettering. I try desperately to read it, hoping I can find out where he is and where he might be headed. The only word I’m able to make out on the sign, however, is “North”.