Part 19 (1/2)

”Sorry. I beg your pardon. I'm not in love with you.”

She smiled in pride and scorn, like at a liar. ”But you climbed Hark Mountain.”

”Reckoned I'd like to see the Bottomless Pool.”

”Only people like Mr. Howsen know about the Bottomless Pool. Bottomless pools usually mean the ones near Lake Lure, on Highway 74.”

”Those aren't rightly bottomless,” I said. ”Anyway, I heard about this one, the real one, in a country song. Slinging my guitar forward, I strummed and sang:

Way up on Hark Mountain I climb all alone, Where the trail is untravelled The top is unknown.

Way up on Hark Mountain Is the Bottomless Pool.

You look in its waters And they mirror a fool.

”You're making that up,” she charged me.

”No, it was made up before my daddy's daddy was born. Most country songs have truth in them. The song brought me here, not your witch-spell.”

She laughed, short and sharp, almost a yelp. ”Call it the long arm of coincidence, John. You're here, anyway. Look in the water and see whether it mirrors a fool.”

Plainly she didn't know the next verse, so I sang that

You can boast of your learning And brag of your sense, It won't make no difference A hundred years hence.

Stepping one foot on a poolside rock, I looked in.

It mirrored neither a fool nor a wise man. I could see down forever and ever, and I recollected all I'd ever heard norrated about the Bottomless Pool. How it was blue as the sky, but with a special light of its own; how no water ran into it, excusing some rain, but it stayed full; how you couldn't measure it, you could let down a sinker till the line broke of its own weight.

Though I couldn't spy out the bottom, it wasn't rightly dark down there. Like looking up into blue sky, I looked down into blue water, and in the blue was a many-color s.h.i.+ne, like deep lights.

”I didn't need to use the stolen scarf,” she said at my elbow. ”You're lying about why you came. The spell brought you.”

”I'm sorry to say, ma'am,” I replied, ”I don't even call your name to my mind.”

”Do names make a difference if you love me? Call me Annalinda. I'm rich. I've been loved for that alone, and for myself alone.”

”I'm plain and poor,” I told her. ”I was raised hard and put up wet. I don't have more than 60 cents in my old clothes. It wonders me, Miss Annalinda, why you need to bother.”

”Because I'm not used to being ignored,” she said again.

Down in the Bottomless Pool's blueness wasn't a fish, or a weed of gra.s.s. Only that deep-away sparkly flash of lights, changing as you spy changes on a bubble of soap blown by a little child.

Somebody cleared his throat and spoke, ”I see the spell I gave you worked, ma'am.”

I knew Mr. Howsen as he came up the trail to Hark Mountain's top.

He was purely ugly. I'd been knowing him ten years, and he looked as ugly that minute as the first time I'd seen him, with his mean face and his big hungry nose and the black patch over one eye. When he'd had both his eyes, they were so close together you'd swear he could look through a keyhole with the two of them at once.

”Yes,” said Miss Annalinda. ”I want to pay you what I owe you.

”No, you pay One Other,” said Mr. Howsen, his hands in the pockets of the long black coat he wore summer and winter. ”For value received, ma'am. I only pa.s.sed his word along to you.”

He tightened his lips at me, in what wasn't any smile. ”John,” he said, ”you relish journeying. You've relished it since you were just a chap, going what way you felt like. You've seen a right much of this world. But she tolled you to her, and you'll stay with her, and you're obliged to One Other.”

”One other what?” I asked him.

Though that was just a defy. Of course, hearing of Hark Mountain and the Bottomless Pool, I'd heard of One Other. That mountain folks say he's got the one arm and the one leg, that he runs on the one leg and grabs with the one arm and what he grabs goes with him into the Bottomless Pool; that it's One Other's power and knowledge that lets witches do their spells next to Bottomless Pool.

”Be here with the lady when One Other asks payment,” he said. ”That spell was good a many years before Theocritus written it down in Greek. It'll be good when English is as old as Greek is now. It tolled you here.”

For the life of me, I couldn't remember seeing Miss Annalinda at Major Enderby's. ”My will brought me, not hers,” I said. ”I wanted to see the Bottomless Pool. I wonder at the soap bubble color in it.”

”Ain't any soap in there, John,” said Mr. Howsen. ”Soap bubbles don't get so big as to have that much color.”

”You're rightly sure how big soap bubbles get, Mr. Howsen? Once I heard a science doctor say this whole life of ours, the heaven and the earth, the sun and moon and stars, hold a shape like a big soap bubble. He said it stretched and spread like a soap bubble, all the suns and stars and worlds getting farther apart as time pa.s.sed.”

”Both of you stay where you are,” said Mr. Howsen. ”One Other will want to find the both of you here.”

”But-” Miss Annalinda made out to begin.

”Both of you stay,” Mr. Howsen said again, and with his shoe toe he scuffed a mark across the trail. He hawked, and spit on the mark. ”Don't cross that line. It would be worse for you than if fire burned you behind and before, inside and out.”

Like a lizard he had bobbed over the edge and down the trail.

”Let's go, too,” I said to Miss Annalinda, but she stared at the mark of Mr. Howsen's shoe toe, and the healthy blood had paled out from under the tan on her face.

”Pay him no mind,” I said. ”Let's start, it's toward evening.”

”He said not to cross the mark,” she reminded me, scared.

”I don't care a shuck for his saying. Come on, Miss Annalinda,” and I took her by the arm.

That quick she was fighting me. Holding her arm was like holding the spoke of a runaway wheel. Her other hand racked hide and blood from my cheek, and she tried to bite. I couldn't hang on without hitting her, so I let her go, and she sat on a rock by the poolside and cried into her hands.

”Then I'll have to go alone,” I said, and took a step.

”John!” she called, loud and shaky as a horse's whinny. ”If you cross that mark, I'll throw myself into this Bottomless Pool!”

Sometimes you can tell a woman means her words. This was such a time. I walked back, and she looked to where the down-sunk sun made the sky's edge red and fiery. It would be cold and dark when the sun went. With trembling brown hands she rolled the blue jeans down her long legs.

”I'll build up the fire,” I said, and tried to break a branch from a claw-looking tree.

But it was tough and had th.o.r.n.y stickers. So I went to the edge of the clearing, away from where Mr.

Howsen had drawn his mark on us, and found an armful of dead-fallen wood to freshen the fire she'd made for her witching. It blazed up, the color of the setting sun. High in the sky, that grew pale before it would grow dark, slid a big buzzard. Its wings flopped, slow and heavy, spreading their feathers like long fingers.