The Honey Witch

Chapter XV





A man is given to believe the most unlikely things once possessed of a particular disturbance, and I came to view the world of Ana Lagori as such a man.

Encapsulated under the pristine dome of morning, the homestead in the clearing appeared subdued. In lazy, cushioned slumber, the calico cats softly breathed on the front porch rug and linens billowed softly in breezy intervals on the clothesline. I found Ana in the kitchen garden among strings of early peas and resisted an urge to unexpectedly take her in my arms and kiss her deeply, perhaps even possessively, under the perfect light of the sun.

Instead, I stepped to the edge of the overgrown cemetery, where the fragrance of felled orchard blossoms still lingered, and deciphered names on the limestone markers.

The soothing lilt of Ana’s voice split the silences. “Nana Madeline and mama,” she said.

She moved from the other side of the garden fence, carrying a full basket of endives and radishes at her hip. The wide brim of her straw hat shadowed her expression, but I imagined it to be unperturbed.

Ana walked quietly across the carpet of mingling grasses and flowers that spread over the neglected ground and repeated names of the dead, as she brushed aside the slender tangle of daylily leaves. Pointing to the others, one by one, she stated: “Jeanne Marie and her companion, Quinta, first to come to the hill. Giselle. Rosalie. Letitia. The grandmothers who became widows through the weakness of men.”

“Each of them?” I inquired.

She nodded affirmatively. “But there lies Duncan,” she pointed, “beloved of Letitia, the only grandfather buried here.”

“Only one?” I asked curiously.

Ana shrugged. “Some men run.”

“Except Duncan,” I surmised.

“Beloved of Letitia,” she repeated simply.

The clear and recognizable call of a cardinal echoed atop the oaks and Ana shaded her eyes, scrutinizing the direction of the sound.

“Ana,” I stated haltingly, for I had reached my decision and wondered, just now, if it unveiled my own weakness to her also. “I came back here today to talk with you a little while, before I leave you and this place in peace.”

She frowned and stared at me through unreadable eyes.

“You’re leaving Porringer?”

I nodded quietly. “Yes.”

She seemed to ponder this for a moment before asking: “And what is beyond the hill that compels you to leave so suddenly?”

“The only life I know, Ana,” I replied.

Again, she appeared to carefully contemplate my words. She turned slowly and walked toward the back screen door.

“Ana…” I started, stepping forward. The sweep of a sudden breeze stirred the tall overgrowth blanketing the small square of cemetery earth.

Stay. Stay with me, Ethan Broughton, that same otherworldly voice murmured through the turbulent airs beginning to whirl beyond the disintegrating headstones, and through the orchard trees.

Follow, the voice urged. Follow me.

I caught up with Ana’s steps and reached for her arm, but a drenching downpour from an abrupt cloudburst arrested my hand before contact.

“Come in from the rain, then, Ethan Broughton,” Ana said, “and talk with me.”

The atmosphere took on a heightened sense of premonition. I noticed a steamy barricade of fog developing along the edge of the clearing and yet, amidst the haunts and enchantments I knew she possessed, I summoned all resolve to remain unmoved.

Once inside, Ana set her basket on the table and reached for a towel as she offered me a chair. She dried the rain from my hair with an almost tender regard.

“Jolene says you have hair like a girl’s,” she remarked quietly.

“Reckless abandon, I suppose,” I replied somberly.

She combed her fingers through the thick, neglected coils falling, now, just below the shirt collar. “I like it just the same,” she stated.

Ana revived the smoldering embers beneath the oven burner with additional kindling and set the kettle of water to boil. Tousling her long pale hair with a towel while setting fresh strawberries, herb butter and fresh bread on the table, she busied herself in silence. She let the calico cats inside and tossed out crusts of old bread over the porch railing. Preparing dried leaves, she poured two cups from the boiling kettle water and pushed the plates of bread and strawberries toward me before sitting at the table herself.

“Eat,” she insisted, but I was not hungry. She did not approve of this and cut and buttered a slice of bread, edging the plate closer. “I see by your eyes, you are troubled.”

“I am,” I admitted.

“Why?”

Where to begin. I leaned forward slightly and pushed the plate aside. “Ana,” I started, “you are the wonder of wonders and although I will never betray you or my experience here, I, at the same time, find it near impossible to come to terms with everything I have been witness to.”

“And what have you witnessed, Ethan Broughton,” she wanted to know, “that you cannot live with?”

“All of it,” I confessed. I glanced around the room and lifted my arms for emphasis. “This.”

A muffled roll of thunder rumbled outside the door; a sudden flash of light pierced the air.

“My home?” she asked, seemingly confused. “My home where I released your body and mind from the poison? Where you did sleep and find sanctuary from the demons of secret memory?”

“Yes.”

I sat back. Another spark of lightning splayed the air; another train of thunder that seemed to concentrate itself only above the clearing.

“These impossible medical procedures," I responded. "Storms that come out of clear blue skies. Birds that fly as though by command. If I don’t leave, I swear to God, I’ll lose my mind.”

“You are not pleased you are free from your bondage?” she inquired, a darkness shadowing her eyes. “You are not grateful?”

“Of course, I am,” I replied. “How can I explain so you will understand? I come from a world where what you do is inconceivable: a world of science and theory and where at least some explanation, however elementary, exists and where this, all of this, perilous superstition and talk of witches…”

“Where do you hear these things?” she blurted out angrily, slapping the table top. “Witches and such like. You are the superstitious one. What do you know of these things? What do you know of the living blood of the earth?”

“I’ve angered you, “ I replied apologetically, “and this I did not wish to do.” Though sincere, I was at the same moment acutely aware of my own uneasiness in the face of her anomalous capabilities.

“But you want to be here,” she said, her voice suddenly soothing, almost suggestive, in its undertone. “You want to be here more than you want to go.”

I squeezed the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes against an increasing tension. “God help me, Ana, I do, but I am equally attached to my sanity.”

She studied my apprehension closely. I was not fool enough to believe she did not also sense my distraction: as a man and as a scientist, brought down from the arrogance of definition, through the familiar realm of judicious reasoning.

The unsettled air outside the screen door abated inexplicably as her mood appeared to modify. I studied the back door and found that a gloomy mist had formed beyond the screen, pushing its way like a purposeful weave through the air; where not even the trees beyond remained visible through its depth. I knew, without inspection, that the front screen would reveal the same.

“It happens sometimes in the hills,” she remarked. “Sudden storms; thick, unmovable fogs.”

“Does it,” I stated with a dispassionate sense of my own humanness, bound neither by gender nor philosophy, but by primitive cognition alone.

Ana rose, light on her feet, and as though by brief flurry of wind, came around the table and grasped my shoulders from behind.

“If you stay with me,” she whispered in my ear, “I will show you the things you yearn to be revealed.”

“Perhaps I no longer wish to be enlightened,” I replied in earnest.

“Accept my gift,” she pleaded seductively. “As you did before.”

“And you,” I inquired, mindful of Jolene Parker’s earliest counsel, “what do you ask in return?”

I could feel the growing crescent of her smile against the flesh of my ear; her soft breath brushing against my hair. Outside, the fogs appeared to take shape, spiraling, undulating, sweeping, as though by force of some incorporeal design.

Ana tightened her embrace. “I ask only for your company.”

Indebted by her knowledge of a past I had revealed to no one, I considered I might be bargaining more than companionship, should I agree to her recompense. I was already dangerously close to actually believing she could affect the very forces of nature at will; that so great and hidden her capability, she might well see into the very depths of the human soul.

And if she knew this, she knew the secret of that rainy day in the grove, where the dead oak concealed the alchemy of her methods and the penalty might not be the wretched death Fitch prophesied. Like a sad and longing white bird in its’ unbearable cage, Ana Lagori would assuage her loneliness through communion with a stranger come, unaware, upon her strand of mystique.

The pardon from death would be companionable captivity, itself.

She stepped around and straddled my thighs, holding my head in both hands. She kissed my mouth more deeply and more lingeringly than I imagined kissing her only a short while before.

She had sensed even my desire.

Still, I could not answer her.

Yes, you will stay, the vaporous airs surrounding the clearing affirmed in that disembodied murmuring.

As much as I remained conflicted between sensuality and circumspection, Ana Lagori appeared satisfied.

I kept watch as the fog retreated into the corridors of the surrounding oaks and the forest beyond, nearly to dissipate, but never quite completely dissolve. I did not keep vigilance on the preternatural haze as one might suppose an apprehensive guest might, who either plotted escape or struggled in an effort to believe some measure of free will existed in the matter, but rather the phenomenon seemed to gauge her mood.

And her mood brightened remarkably during the passing afternoon hours.

As the dusk began to settle and Ana lit the lantern’s amber light, I found that the quiet sound of evening’s domesticity eased some of my misgivings. In those impressive moments, I considered it was almost possible to content myself in this extraordinary and remote place, with all its shades of temperament intact, if only for a little while. That I made myself useful earlier, splitting wood for the range and planting the potted lilac next to her porch rail, broadened a sense of unconstraint as the surrounding mist evaporated, although, still, never completely dispelled. We dined on simple fare: thick garden soup, bread and cheese, wild berries. She tossed crumbs of cornbread out the back door, she said, to keep the spirits appeased.

Throughout the evening, I reflectively studied Ana’s deft weave on the threaded loom until my eyes could no longer focus. It occurred to me that during the former days and nights I spent within these cabin walls, I never inquired as to where she, herself, slept; perhaps feeling self-conscious; perhaps too muddled in my own affairs to inquire into her own. But now, on this night and far less absorbed, I wondered, as I swallowed the last of a second glass of elderberry wine, where it was either of us would sleep.

She passed the shuttle through the shed and beat the cotton strip in place. Sensing my deepening exhaustion, and perhaps with an equal awareness of the sensual in her own mind, she casually remarked: “You are weary, Ethan Broughton. You must rest.”

Her bed, draped with the soft and familiar patterns of cotton quilting and embroidered sheets, tempted a release only the numbing darkness of ushered sleep can ensure. I undressed and buried myself within the womb of air-scented linens and elderberry induced meditation. Many questions I might have asked, but the mind drifted into the vacuum of a comforting sway of the clock pendulum and the skilled, precise rhythm of Ana’s hands at the loom.

It may have been the spectral echo of an owl from somewhere deep in the forested hills, or the soft breathing of imagined presence standing near the bedside that aroused the subconscious, but I became aware of a pearlesque vision of Venus in the glow of fading embers. A cross breeze filtered between the front and back door screens, and stirred the honeyed flame of the beeswax candle burning low on the dining table.

I reached for her as she fell equally into my embrace and I tasted her mouth as deeply as drinking from a spring-fed pool. Her flesh, her hair, as rare and perfect silk against my own skin and a fragrance of roses and ferns mingled with traces of musk and earth.

“Do you think you could love one such as I?” she asked.

Yes. God, yes. “I do,” I returned, my breath catching with her own and settling upon the ghostly resonance of the wall clock striking the twelfth hour.

I urged her body deeper against the softly aired linens, kissing and stroking her body as one might savor the texture of the finest satin.

But there was no one.

No one.

The beeswax candle sputtered low against the quarter hour chimes and the muted spirits of lucid dreams retreated into the shadowed corners of the room. Where was she? I glimpsed the form of an animal at the screen door. It was the phantom white she-wolf not seen since the night of Jemmy Isaak’s crisis. And now, it had returned, this mysterious beast rumored to dissuade intruders from Ana’s cloistered world by night, returned and focused, just now, on my presence in particular. I could see the flame of the candle reflecting in its eyes. Yes, it could be a true wolf, I contemplated quietly: the eyes feral, cautious, with an undomesticated intensity recognizable even by dulling candlelight.

The flame wick extinguished itself. I heard the rustle of the creature’s paws as it lay down and reclined against the bottom of the screen door.

And I wondered, vaguely, as I edged back into slumber, if there was something to her elderberry wine capable of heightening the sensation of desire, where the body and the senses became so inseparable, that one becomes entirely consumed...even in one’s own dreams.

In the drifting solitude, I considered that I truly could grow to have an abiding affection.





~*~