me?” I said. “I don’t know where you would get that impression from. Do you think that just because I knew what a quipu is? That’s nothing to do with magic, it’s because—”
She resumed brushing her hair. “Of course you are a witch,” she said with offhand impatience. “You smell like a witch.”
“What?” I demanded. “What do you mean by that?”
She shrugged. “What is the scent of a baby or an old person or a man in love? There are different human scents. You have the scent of a witch. How wonderful it feels to have a full head of hair to brush again! You take these things for granted when you’re young.”
“Excuse me, I’m not a witch,” I said. “That would be ridiculous.”
“Then your mother’s mothers were,” she said very matter-of-factly, setting the brush on the dresser. “Some ancestress. You carry the blood.”
Suddenly I was irrationally angry at Frank. “Did my husband tell you to say that to me?”
“I would not say something because your husband told me to. Ha! What an idea.”
“I have an ancestor who was hanged in Salem, but she was not a witch—”
“Well, somebody was,” she said, and peered into her toiletries bag for something.
“This is nonsense,” I said, ruffled. “I don’t have one of those”—pointing to the quipu-like object—“and I don’t do magic, and I’m not a witch, and I shall go put on deodorant right now if you think I smell like one.”
“You act as if I have insulted you,” she said, sounding amused. She took a bottle of witch hazel and a cotton pad from the little silk bag. “I have given you the greatest compliment.”
“Not by my lights,” I said.
As soon as I left her, I confronted Frank, who never understands that the Salem witch hysteria is inappropriate for jokes. He claimed innocence, pointed out that he had never been alone with Erszebet, but then—since the matter had been raised, I suppose—repeated his perennial joke-theory that Mary Estey really was a witch. “Now that we know there really are witches, don’t you want to know?” he said with his eager little knowing grin. “Wouldn’t that be something?”
How could I ever fault him his curiosity? So. Made sure the guests were settled in with bath towels and water glasses, and then went up into the attic to Nana’s trunk, which I have managed to avoid opening for a quarter century, despite Frank’s nudging. God knows why I felt compelled tonight. I already know the family tree; I don’t require seeing it in writing. But something pushed me to go up.
I pulled the string on the bare bulb that hangs from the attic ceiling, knelt down by the heavy cedar chest that lives equidistant from the central chimneys, windows, and attic door. Blew the worst of the dust off the top. Grasped the two near corners and lifted carefully as the wood creaked in protest; the clasp broke at least a century ago.
Inside, I saw the sheaf of family papers I knew would be there—but then I saw something I had never noticed before. I thought it was a cowl or scarf, maybe a battered swaddling cloth. Then I realized. Froze. Felt dizzy. Its similarity to Erszebet’s was unmistakable. I should look at that more closely, I thought. I should reach for it. Yes, I’ll reach for it.
My limbs would not obey me. I watched my own hands carefully close the lid of the chest. I stood up and left the room very quickly as if propelled by an external force, shutting the light behind me. I sat on the top stair, staring into the darkness until I was sure even Frank had gone to sleep.
Diachronicle
DAYS 295–304 (LATE MAY, YEAR 1)
In which there isn’t enough magic to go around
THE NEXT DAY WE RETURNED to the ODEC to begin a more sophisticated series of experimentations. Rebecca East-Oda made it clear that she felt Oda-sensei’s involvement in the project had reached the end of its natural course, and so neither of them returned with us.
We were to essentially sequester ourselves for a fortnight as Erszebet eased back into the habit of performing magic and displayed her skills for us. Although we were free to leave the building to eat, exercise, take the air—even to return to my apartment occasionally to shower—Erszebet and I would sleep in the ODEC room; Tristan was already happily ensconced in his bachelor pad of an office. By the time we arrived that first morning, the Maxes had brought in camp cots, towels and linens, a couple of well-fed lab rats and lab-rat grub, a case of Old Tearsheet Best Bitter for Tristan, toothbrushes and toothpaste (oh God, I’d barter my body for a tube of Crest now! Cleaning my teeth with a paste of borax and ground cuttlefish bones, with anise to “sweeten” it. Ych.) . . . and as many breakfast groceries and snacks as the college-dorm-style refrigerator in the upstairs office could hold. There were also several boxes of seemingly random props from a list that Tristan had texted the Maxes the night before. As soon as they’d set up our bunker, the Maxes packed up and moved on, presumably to their next shadowy government assignment. They took all but one of the Vladimirs with them. We still had a full complement of Lukes to guard the building and assure our security, but they were otherwise useless.
The days that followed were long ones, the take-out food we lived on relatively tasteless (by twenty-first-century standards . . . context really is everything!), and by night we were each too tired even for conversation. Tristan in particular was worn down and preoccupied. My memories of that time are drab and bleary, despite the remarkable nature of our undertakings.
The first week’s experiments, dictated by Tristan, included: manifesting inanimate objects, both those occurring in nature (e.g., sticks and stones) and those man-made (e.g., a cap gun . . . or at least something resembling one); changing the chemical composition of liquids (e.g., water to salt water); moving small things (e.g., the manifested cap gun) from one spot in the ODEC to another. The array of requests evolved over the days from the mundane (“turn this sweater inside out”) to the fanciful (“turn this vanilla ice cream into Rocky Road”) to the creepy (“animate the stuffed cat”) to the startling (“turn this lab rat into a newt”).
Erszebet was willing to show off her powers, although after a day or two of adjusting to having them back, she made it very clear that she found the assignments themselves tiresome and stupid. She would, she informed us, perform magic because it pleased her to do so after so many years deprived of it; she would not perform it simply because Mr. Tristan Lyons required it of her. She was flexing a muscle she’d longed to flex for many scores of years, and to a certain degree she was preening. Once the buzz of that wore thin, we knew she would feel no obligation to continue the dog-and-pony show.
Tristan did not waste breath explaining to either of us what his higher-ups were expecting from this sequestration; I just took his lead, trying to learn as much as we could about Erszebet’s powers, although it was a trying undertaking. Erszebet herself had cast us as good cop/bad cop, and it was natural enough to play those roles. Tristan pushed her; I cajoled. He made her feel significant; I made her feel appreciated. Truth be told, after three days of it, his job proved far easier than mine, for she was, to use a post-Victorian turn of phrase, high-maintenance.
Other than her attitude, our biggest headache was that obviously we could not tape or photograph what she was doing in the ODEC; we could not be in there with her without blacking out. She had to thump on the door just to let us know she was finished with each spell.
Our
