The Lion of Farside

" ^ "

Within a week we'd moved onto 120 acres of blackland in Macon County, Illinois, north of Decatur. And it was ours as long as we kept making the mortgage payments. Varia made the down payment, $600, from money left her by Will, and what Pa had paid down on Will's place. And had enough left over to buy a team and harness for $80, and equipment we hadn't brought with us, plus seed and some house furnishings. Everything secondhand, of course, but lots of people were selling stuff, good stuff, to keep food on the table. We weren't bad off, compared to them. We still had money for potatoes and beans, bacon and oatmeal, and salt and sugar and flour. Buying livestock would have to wait though. Except for pasture and hay, I figured to plant most of the ground to corn-corn and a big truck garden-and enough oats for the team next winter, and for the cow I figured to buy when I'd made a crop. In the barn there was already hay and oats enough for the team a few months, while the woodshed had wood and cobs for the stoves awhile. Even a couple sacks of coal for the kitchen.

The buildings were pretty decent, and the house was more than big enough for the two of us. They all needed paint, but that'd have to wait. The five hundred dollars Varia hadn't been able to get from Idri would have made a big difference-except it wouldn't have, the way things turned out. But anyway, it seemed to me we'd get by in good shape.

You never know entirely what to expect, working a new team, but when I brought them home, Varia talked to them awhile, and they worked out real well. She was always good with horses, riding or handling them. I started plowing that same day.

I even got a job milking eight Brown Swiss cows for a neighbor, morning and evening. Given the hard times, it paid pretty decent-fifty cents a day-and each morning I took home a big jar of milk and some fresh butter, worth another twenty cents or so.

It also meant I got up at four every morning, to eat before going to Morath's to milk, and finished up there at seven or so in the evening. Between milkings I walked a furrow behind the team all day, keeping the plow where it belonged. So I made a point of being in bed before nine, and I'm talking about in bed for the purpose of sleeping.

Nonetheless, we had time to sit around a little before bedtime, and the very first night, Varia told me she wanted to lay a spell on me. Naturally I kind of backed off from that. "What for?" I asked her.

"So you'll understand me better."

"Hon," I said, "I understand you pretty well already."

She didn't say anything for a minute, just sort of chewed on her lower lip as if she was thinking. Finally she said, "Why do you suppose the Macurdy family was chosen to father my children?"

I stared at her without knowing a thing to say.

"Where do you think the Macurdies came from?" she asked.

"What d'you mean? From Kentucky, way back when James Madison was president."

"And before Kentucky?"

It seemed to me right then that I was going to learn something I didn't want to know. I shook my head. "Grampa said we're Scotch-Irish. In school they told us that means from Scotland by way of Ireland."

"Let me put a spell on you, and afterward I'll tell you. It will make it easier for both of us."

I squirmed in my chair. "Will it take long? I thought maybe the two of us could go to bed early."

She laughed, the same young-girl laugh I'd heard since I was a little boy. "It won't take long. And it's as good as an hour's sleep anyway."

It took me half a minute to say yes, but I knew right away I'd do it. I mean, I'd trusted her so far, and she'd trusted me, and we'd bound ourselves together till death us do part. And what was I scared of? She'd never do me any harm. Besides, it seemed to me she'd spelled me that night she'd taken me to her house, and that had worked out just fine. "Okay," I told her, "I'll do it."

"Thank you, darling," she said, and pulled her chair up closer. "Now look in my eyes."

That was always easy to do, but this time was different. It was like they drew me right in, and I went limp, but after what seemed like ten, fifteen seconds I came back to normal again. "Sorry it didn't work," I said, thinking she'd be disappointed. But she laughed.

"Look at the clock."

I looked, and my mouth must have dropped open. We'd sat down at ten to eight, and now it was a quarter after. "What happened?" I asked.

"You and I did what was necessary. Told your body not to get old; that it's got the ylvin genes. And got you ready to start learning." She came over and knelt down beside me, and kissed me sweeter'n honey. Old Junior started to swell up right away, and Varia began to purr. "Do you still want to go to bed early?" she asked me.

We both of us stood up then, her laughing, and off we went. I didn't get to sleep by nine that night, but I felt fine when she woke me up at four. I'd been dreaming up a storm, and none the worse for it. Part of the dream was being a hundred years old and still young. Strange dream, but not near as strange as it would have been if I wasn't married to Varia.

The next evening we did something different. She laid a lighter spell on me that left me awake but relaxed. Then she taught me to do what she called meditate. I'd always thought "meditate" meant to think about something, but this was different. She told me afterward she hadn't thought it'd go that well, first time. The spell had helped, but she told me my breeding was showing itself. It turned out we'd sat like that, straight-backed in two kitchen chairs, for half an hour.

When we were done, she began telling me things. I listened, but I didn't really believe. I mean, part of me said she wouldn't lie to me about things like that, but what she told me was flat-out unbelievable. My great-great-grampa had come from her world, she said, where her Sisterhood was breeding up strains of people for special purposes, like we breed up hogs and cattle and horses. This was because they were always in danger from "the ylver," who had a lot more power than the Sisterhood, and the only way her people could survive was to get stronger and smarter, and be better at magic.

Anyway, Great-great-grampa had been an experiment, and it'd worked real well. Except for one thing: he hadn't wanted to do what they told him. He was to breed a lot of different sisters, but he'd fallen in love with one of them, and her with him, and he didn't want to keep on living as a stud horse. So the boss sister took her away, sent her off somewhere.

To make a long story short, he ran off to the nearest gate and went through it into Kentucky, coming out in Muhlenberg County. Afraid of being followed and caught, he headed north and crossed the Ohio River into Indiana, where he got work deadening timber long enough to make a stake and get married. Then he went on north again to Washington County, where he homesteaded the land our family's worked ever since.

They'd bred up other studs besides him, but back in Yuulith where'd he'd come from, his progeny proved out specially good, so they tracked him by following his trace in what Varia called the Web. That was something they'd just learned to do; only a few knew how. Then they sent her to bear children by Will.

That's what she told me, and knowing what I know now, I know it's true.

Only now, she told me, it had all gone to waste. Most of the Sisters had been killed and the rest scattered. She didn't know if any of her children were alive. The whole story seemed a little more real to me when she said that, from the way her eyes welled up. She'd never seen her children beyond a couple weeks old, except in the pictures I'd found, but they were hers, all she had.

After that she spelled me often, and did drills with me, twenty or thirty minutes at a time. To open up my magical powers, she said. I told her that'd be a waste of time, that I didn't have any to open up, and anyway I didn't want magical powers. I had my brain and my two hands and my muscles, and everything else I needed. She was magical enough for both of us.

She looked at me long and seriously. I'd never seen her more serious. "Darling," she told me, "you do have them. They showed up more when you were little. Do you remember once when you were seven or eight, and you looked up at the corner of the ceiling, where I'd looked? Before Idri, my Evansville contact was my favorite sister, Liiset, and now and then she'd look in on me. Something Idri couldn't do.

"She wasn't there physically, but you sensed her spirit and translated it to her physical appearance-her face. You couldn't have done any of that if you didn't have the talent."

I remembered, for the first time since that day. It'd been too spooky. "Seems like I've lost it since, though," I said.

She shook her head. "How did you find the pictures? How did you even know enough to look?"

"But what if I don't want magical powers?" I asked her.

She didn't answer right away. Then she said, "If you were blind, and didn't entirely believe in sight, you might be uncomfortable if I said I wanted to open your eyes."

I didn't have anything to answer, so I nodded and told her fine, let's do it. It would make her happy, and I figured she wouldn't do something bad for me. My problem, I told myself, was I was scared of what I didn't know. I'd been scared that night the transparent Varia took me home with her, too, and look how much I'd liked that after we got there! But I still felt uncomfortable about "opening my magical powers."

Over several weeks, I couldn't see we were making any progress. Varia said it was a little like putting a pot of water on the stove to boil: You wait and wait, and nothing seems to be happening, and suddenly there it is boiling. I couldn't help wondering, though, if maybe the wood in my firebox was piss elm, and wouldn't burn.

One evening when we'd finished, her eyes didn't have their usual steadiness, and I asked her if anything was wrong.

"Not with you," she said.

"With what, then?"

"I guess I'm just tired."

"Looks like more than tired. Looks like worried."

She smiled. "See? Your powers are coming back. I was thinking about my children; all forty-one of them."

Yeah, I thought to myself, maybe my powers are coming back, 'cause I can tell you're lying to me. I really didn't believe they were; just a look at her face told me. But I wasn't going to badger her. "I'll have the plowing done tomorrow morning," I said. "Maybe you and I ought to take the rest of the day off. Go in to Decatur and walk through the stores. Buy some ice cream, and celebrate. Maybe Morath will even divide my cows up between his daughters to milk in the evening, and we can blow twenty cents on a movie."

She came over and kissed me, tears in her eyes. "Curtis, you're so nice, I love you more than you know. If anything ever happens to me, I want you to remember that. Regardless of anything. And tomorrow-tomorrow I'd love to go to Decatur with you when you're done plowing."

That's Varia for you, always thinking, always trying to do the right thing. I still didn't realize how well I'd married. A good good woman.

Anyway, when tomorrow got there, and I'd milked and had breakfast, her tune had changed. "Before we blow any money on ice cream and a movie," she said, "there are things I need to do to this house. Let the plowing wait till this afternoon." She handed me a list. "I want you to get these things for me right now. I need to civilize this kitchen."

I stared at her. She was standing there kind of like Ma did in front of Pa sometimes, when she didn't want any argument. I looked at the list: red and white checkered oil cloth, paint, and eight or ten other things she had every right to want, or even have. But none of it seemed very important, and I'd have to chase all over town to get it. "Okay," I grumped. I'd never been grumpy before with Varia; I didn't even give her a kiss, sad to say. How many times I felt bad about that.

I went out to the truck, gave it a crank, and drove off to Decatur. It was almost noon when I got back. By that time I'd convinced myself she'd gotten pregnant; I'd heard how women can get notional when they're pregnant. When I walked into the house, she wasn't in the kitchen, and I felt a little pang. "Honey!" I called out, "I'm back! I got your stuff!"

She didn't answer, and I got a sick feeling. Two weeks before, I'd have told myself I was scared she'd gone off and left me because I hadn't given her that kiss, but now I hardly glanced at the idea. It was something a lot worse. "Maybe she's out in the privy," I muttered, but didn't believe that either, not even enough to go out and call to her. Instead, somehow or other I went into the pantry, and there on the counter was some folded tablet paper held down by a stove-lid handle. I unfolded it and started reading, though somehow I knew what had happened-not the details, but the main thing. Sweet darling Curtis, the gate is going to open again soon, and they are coming to take me away, Idri and some men. The Sisterhood still exists. It's been butchered and forced to flee, but it still exists. Idri must have tracked me, and then gone back to Evansville for help. I sensed them coming yesterday, and this morning I felt them again while I was cooking breakfast. They'll be here very soon. It wouldn't do any good for us to run away. They would only follow. That's why I sent you to town. I'm sure she's supposed to take us both, but she'd find an excuse to kill you. I know her too well. Don't forget to take the money out of the honey jar. It's yours. Darling, it hurts so much to leave you like this. But you'll get over it. It was beautiful to be your wife this short time. I'll remember you and love you forever.

Reading it, it was like I'd been there watching her write it, tears running down her face like mine were, and for a minute, when I was done, I felt helpless, like a wooden man. But only for a minute.

4: Conjure Woman