Indiana Jones and the White Witch Page 5

  They talked briefly with Kerrie St. Brendan. He gave them short and angry shrift, far more occupied with tending to his wife than answering questions from baffled "poppies with badges" scribbling useless notes on pads.

  "Talk to my daughter," he snarled to the division chief. "You do my woman no good with all your prattling."

  "Prattling, is it?" the frustrated, angiy chief said to Caitlin. "He calls all this murderous killing prattling?"

  "No. He does not. He faults only you," Caitlin said. She sat on a large stone before the entrance to the great hall, the police gathered about her, Indy and Gale to the side.

  Caitlin had little to tell them. She detailed the sudden attack. "Who were they?" She shrugged. "Murderers."

  "What did they want? Why would they attack you like this?"

  Caitlin pointed to the nine bodies on the ground. "Ask them."

  "I can't bloody well do that, miss. They're dead."

  "You are alert," she said caustically. "I can't ask them, either."

  "We'll do a full report tomorrow, miss."

  "As you wish."

  "We'll want to question everybody."

  "You can't do that."

  "Why not?"

  "We have almost forty dead. The children are in shock, and," she said in a tone that brought the officer up short, "you will not bother the little ones. Their minds need time to heal."

  "Well, you heard. We've got ambulances and some lorries on their way. We'll have to remove the dead ones. I'm sorry to do that at such a terrible time, but, well, you know, police procedure and all that."

  "Take the trash." She gestured again to the slain attackers. "We bury our own dead. Here, in the deep woods."

  "We must take them with us."

  "You will not."

  "I'm not going to give you any grief, miss. If not tonight, then tomorrow."

  Caitlin stood up suddenly. To Gale, it was clear that a sudden thought had come to her friend. "All right. The trash leaves in the lorry. Or a garbage truck, it's all the same. Our people must be taken in ambulances. Treated with respect and dignity."

  Relief showed on the officer's face at this sudden show of cooperation. "I respect your sorrow. I appreciate your help," he said as kindly as he could.

  "Do what you must," Caitlin told him. "It does not matter. Nothing will avail you."

  She walked off before the man could reply to her mysterious parting words.

  The ambulances and a single lorry arrived. The police hauled the lifeless bodies of the attackers to the lorry and dumped them in like so many sacks of meal. They did not touch the people from the Glen; these bodies were carried reverently to the ambulances.

  Indy stood with Gale in the shadows to the side of the activity. "I can't believe Caitlin did that," he said finally to Gale.

  "You can't believe she did what?" came the reply.

  "The way she gave in so suddenly. At first she refused to allow the bodies of her people to be taken away. Then, like throwing a switch, she changed her mind."

  "She did no such thing, Indy."

  "One of us is crazy, Gale."

  She shook her head. "Neither of us. Trust me. Trust Caitlin. And be patient. You will understand soon enough."

  "All right."

  The vehicles started back for London in a loose convoy, red taillights flickering through foliage.

  "We'd better be thinking about going back ourselves," Indy said. "Unless you want to stay here with Caitlin and her family."

  Gale shook her head. "No. I want to be with you. You're going to have questions and I may be able to fill in some blanks for you. But, Indy, would you mind waiting awhile?"

  "Something come up?"

  "No, but it will. Perhaps in an hour or two. You'll see."

  "You won't tell me what?"

  "I'd rather not," she said. "I'm not trying to be mysterious, Indy. But it would be so much better if you could see what's going to happen instead of hearing about it."

  He studied her for a moment. She was serious. He nodded. "Okay. I can use the time. Can you take me around to those people who were closest to the attackers? Those who heard them speak, saw how they acted?"

  "All right. Let's start at the caves. That's where the injured are being taken. Where the Old Ones are mixing the herbs and potions to make them better."

  "Doctors?"

  "We have no doctors here, Indy. We never have. If you know the secrets of the forest, it will take care of you."

  If he had never heard the word "witch" mentioned, even once here in St. Brendan Glen, just several minutes spent in the great caves beneath the rugged hills of the Glen erased all doubt that he was in one of the great strongholds of ancient Wicca, a religion and, in most ways, also the way of life of these people. Adults and children, many grievously wounded, lay on clean straw pallets pressed into strong bed frames.

  To all sides, women both old and young tended caldrons bubbling and seething over fires, into which they dropped herbs and plants unknown to Indy, but clearly being boiled and prepared as medicine. He heard a child cry out in pain. Two women were by his side at once. One applied a green salve to an open wound, the other held a silvered cup filled with an opiate, crushed from berries and plants growing all about the Glen, to the youngster's lips. Within minutes, the sudden wails of pain subsided to whimpers, and then that pink glaze of pain that had been in the child's eyes was gone.

  "You're a witch," Indy said to Gale as they followed the tunnels from one cavern to another. It wasn't a question or an accusation, just an acknowledgment of a fact. "I'm not unfamiliar with Wicca, or even the Celts or Druids, or their many offshoots, but this is the first time I have ever been deep inside such a religion. Belief, fanatacism; they intermix. But it's different here. It's, well, natural."

  "I'm sure whatever I tell you, you already know from your research. Sometimes, Indy, I need to remind myself that you're a highly respected professor, known for your studies of ancient times. Not just here in England, but throughout the world."

  "Don't be overwhelmed by what you hear," he said in mild protest.

  "By what I hear?" She laughed. "Indy, I've seen you work, remember? I've seen you look at carvings and strange writings that utterly baffled men of great learning. You might as well be in a London club, pipe between your teeth, a drink in one hand, reading an ancient scroll as if it were a modern pulp magazine!"

  "I wish I'd written that all down. Good grief, Miss Parker, that's the best description of me I've ever heard."

  She grasped his arm with both her hands as they walked. "Go ahead, Indy. Ask away. I'll do my best."

  "All this." He gestured with his free arm. "Has it always been this way?"

  She shook her head. "Hardly anyone outside Wicca really understands what we are, how we came about. There are plenty of books that tell of—"

  "Forget books. Tell me what you've learned from the time you and Caitlin were children here. That's life," Indy stressed. "Not some notes somebody wrote down for their thesis."

  "You know that the religion dates back before the Christian era?"

  "Yes."

  "I believe it's an error to consider the earliest days of what we now call Wicca as a religion. It was essentially a pursuit of the occult."

  "And occult's true domain is the unknown," he added. "Using your own words, based on the way you lived here, growing up, with Wicca as a part of your daily experience," Indy said as he sought a new source of information, "what is Wicca, this way of life"—he gestured to take in all of St. Brendan Glen and the New Forest beyond—"to you as an individual? This isn't idle curiosity, Gale. You may be able to tell me much more about the historical and archaeological facts of this area than I might get from all the official records put together."

  Gale smiled at him. "I know precisely what you mean, Professor," she said in a friendly mocking tone. "When I read about us in the London newspapers, I'm never certain who they're writing about."

  She pointed ahead and to the right, and they
followed a line of torches along an upward incline. They emerged from underground along a short but twisting path, invisible to passersby, that brought them to a hill looking down on the Glen.

  "There it is," she said quietly as they looked on flickering torches and fires. From this distance there was no sign of the horror so recently visited upon the Glen. Even the wind blew toward its center, so that the acrid smoke from destroyed buildings never reached them.

  "Thousands of years ago, no one knows that precisely when," she began slowly, "leaders of villages and hamlets, banding together for food storage and protection against the elements and marauding bands, recognized that they knew very little of the world about them. What we call Wicca today had its origins throughout Europe. In its strictest sense, it wasn't yet a religion."

  Indy nodded. "As I understand it, Wicca was really the attempt to recognize the truth of life and then to practice it as a guideline. Go with wisdom instead of blindness."

  "Very well put, Indy. It recognized that certain individuals had a skill, or instinct, for what was wisdom in making choices for all the people in their groups, and that their advice for the future just happened in the long run to be most beneficial for all. Wicca didn't rule; it guided. Those who wanted to follow, did so. The others were free to go their own way."

  "So it wasn't organized, as such."

  "Right. Unfortunately, there were selfish and greedy people back in those times, just as there are today." Gale sighed. "They were the ones who turned the ability to predict the future to their own ends. What was Wicca, a search for knowledge, became witchcraft, which debases what Wicca stands for. The people who used witchcraft were judged to be sneaks, ruthless, and when nothing else could explain away their growing power, it was said that they were in league with demons and devils."

  "Which put them right up against the growing power of the church," Indy added.

  "And Wicca, which had nothing to do with witchcraft, was tarred with the same brush," Gale said, her tone just a bit sharper. "Along came the game of casting out the witches, all of them, good and bad. No distinction was made between Wicca, which had evolved into a kind and useful religion, as much a way of life as a theological pursuit, and those who cloaked themselves in witches' arts, but were without morality or conscience." She shook her head. "Along came waves of oppression."

  "In its worst form, the Spanish Inquisition," Indy said quietly.

  "The Inquisition made tremendous profit from it. Gold, jewelry, homes, land, women kidnapped for brothels, slavery, and horrible tortures and killing. Depravity at its worst."

  "In short, to hunt and condemn witches was to achieve power over others," Indy commented. "The old game of being top dog."

  "So our forefathers, my ancestors—"

  "Went underground," Indy finished for her. "Look, Gale, all this has been prologue. I want to get down to the personal level, here, in the Glen."

  She nodded. "All right, so let me establish right off the old chip for you what Wicca is for us as our religion. We believe in a supreme being. Use whatever names you want. Ultimate Deity—whatever. I've never known any of us, including the Old Ones, to feel they were wise enough to comprehend what is supreme."

  "Okay, I get the basic picture. You're also communing with nature, and—"

  "That's not good enough, Indy. We don't commune with nature. We're a part of nature and we live that role actively."

  "Now we're getting down to it," Indy said with sudden satisfaction.

  "How ever do you mean that?"

  "I'll answer you with a question. How do you reconcile Wicca's acceptance of a supreme being with the, well, the magic I've already seen. The way roads seem to appear and disappear, little people I can't see cooking our dinner for us. Water that turns almost instantly to ice and becomes water again. Mists that form when everything I know about meteorology says they shouldn't. So I'll accept this as magic. How can you have both your religion and magic? They don't fit in the same picture."

  Gale held her gaze on him. Finally she smiled and shook her head. "So brilliant, so talented, and yet so blind. Poor Indy! Bedeviled with the falsehoods of the modern world."

  "What in blue blazes are you talking about?" he snapped.

  "Indy, where does it say that a deep personal belief in something bigger than us, than all of us, must reject sorcery and magic?"

  "Why, I..." He fell silent, perplexed.

  "They fit as naturally as dark and light, as night and day. That's about as opposite as you can get, but they certainly go together wonderfully."

  "Yes, I know all that. But what I've seen here violates the physical laws by which this whole planet operates!"

  "It does not. Your problem is that you haven't yet learned to see; you haven't let your instincts free so you can feel. So long as you keep that stupid word 'impossible' in the forefront of your brain, you'll always be blind to the magic that's just as real as the invisible wonders of your world."

  "Oh?"

  "You sound like a partridge. But"—she laughed—"when you purse your lips like that, you look like a fish."

  "Very funny."

  "I'll say."

  "What invisible wonders in my, our, world?"

  "Remember when you climbed atop that main structure at Stonehenge? With that crazy antenna you wore around your body?"

  He grimaced. "Knocked me into the middle of next week. Yes, I remember."

  "What was the energy that threw you from the rock?"

  He glowered at her. "I, uh—"

  "You don't know."

  "No, I don't. Do you?"

  "Only that it's earth energy, and the rock is a focal point. Just like a magnetic stone will swing around a compass needle. You don't see the magnetism, but its effect is still working. You don't even feel the magnetism. Unless," she added, "it becomes so powerful that it affects the iron in your blood. Then you feel strange and queer because you don't understand what's happening."

  "So your people can tap into this basic earth energy?"

  Gale shrugged. "You come up with a better explanation, Indy, and I'm your girl."

  "Why do people consider what the witches do as supernatural?"

  "You can answer that yourself!"

  "Yeah. Like curving or bending light so you see in front of you what's to the side."

  "You're the one who told me about refraction, remember? Looking at the fish underwater while you're above the surface, only the fish isn't where you see it? We're simply using what nature offers us."

  "Sure. Easy. After a thousand years of study."

  "No one said it came quickly or was easy."

  "So your magic is actually a way of using earth energies the rest of the world—the untrained world—can't see or understand."

  "Oh, no, you don't, Professor Jones! You're not going to paste a convenient identification label of your making on what we do!"

  "Then what would you call it?"

  "It's magic. But that's just a label, Indy. We use natural energies as well as supernatural forces. Look, natural is what the world recognizes. What's familiar. Anything that's not familiar usually scares the daylights out of people and they stick the label of sorcery on it. Can you imagine going back in time a few hundred years with a Victrola and placing a piece of cactus needle onto a wax record, and the whole thing spins, and out of it comes music and voices? How would you explain that to the local natives? It's magic! Sorcery! They don't understand springs to wind up the magic box. Or electricity, which they can't see and can't even imagine. To them, you're a great wizard who's captured people and music and made them prisoners in that flat disk."

  "I'm getting the feeling"—he grinned—"that this carrot-topped lady of the woods is teaching the professor."

  "Oh, Indy, it's just that it's so frustrating sometimes! Our secret is that we use natural energies other people can't see and we mix them with what people do see. Sure we have magic, but I can't levitate, and I'm not a telepath. But I can see and hear things you can't. Just as a
ncient symbols are as plain to you as the printed English language is to me."

  "You give me too much credit. That's training, experience, knowledge—"

  "You've just described magic!"

  "Interesting viewpoint," he murmured.

  "Oh, don't be so stuffy," she chastised him. "Look at all the forces you understand, and that people use, invisible to the naked eye."

  "Name a hundred."

  "Easier than you think, smarty-pants. Infrared. Ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Cosmic rays. Radio waves. Magnetism. Sounds that dogs can hear but we can't. Gravity, inertia, acceleration—good enough for starters?"

  "There's more to you than I ever imagined," he said with honest praise.

  "Let me add just one more thing."

  "Oh, please. Have at it. It's nice being the student for a change."

  She laughed, a delightful trill. "How many senses do people have, as taught in our schools to children?"

  "The basic five."

  "Right. Why don't we teach the tykes about a sense of balance?"

  "Your point, and well made."

  "And a sense of time, timing, rhythm, past, future, the kinesthetic senses, truth, honor—"

  "I get your point. Based on what you're saying, we block the minds from full reality while they're still young."

  She smiled. He swore he could almost see canary feathers along the edges of that cat grin. "So how come you escaped, Indy? What set you free to see into the past and find wonders where most people see only dust and decay?"

  He shrugged again. "Maverick, I guess."

  "No guess about it. You are a maverick. So are we. That's our magic. Sight, foresight, insight, acceptance."

  "What about the little people?" he asked suddenly.

  "I've never seen them."

  Her reply caught him by surprise. "But... you talk about them, what they do, you said you can hear them laughing—"

  "I can hear the wind, but I can't see it," was her disarming response.

  "You accept them, then. Even if you don't know they're here, in the forest, doing all the things they do."

  "What does your shadow do?"

  "What?"