Part 6 (1/2)

The same four notes, building like stairs upon one another. Carving a black path into blackness. They droned on while the soiled moon rolled from the slopes of the eastern hills to its zenith. Untiring, unchanging, they rang over the spa.r.s.e dome of birch trees and down into the pine-woolly coverts below.

At the foot of the hills, beyond the little lakes fed by the streams of Saara's garden, people in the village of Ludica shut their doors and windows, s.h.i.+vering despite August's heat.

And not least of all, Saara's song echoed through the s.p.a.ces of her own head, until she was mad with her own singing, and her mind and soul became the pure instruments of her purpose.

And when the moon balanced directly over the earth- directly over the round moonlike dome of the hill-Saara let the stair she had built open, and she spoke one name.

”Damiano,” she whispered. She closed her eyes and let the new silence hang in the air.

There was a whispering around Saara, and a rustle like the soft feathers of many birds. ”Speak!” she commanded without opening her eyes.

The rustling grew nearer. It grew warm. ”Saara,” came the sweet, caressing answer. ”My beautiful one. My princess. My queen.”

Saara's stern face slackened with sorrow, but only for a moment. ”Ruggerio,” she whispered.

”Forgive me. I did not mean to wake you.” Her eyes screwed themselves more firmly shut.

”I know, bellissima,” the thin, distant voice replied, chuckling, and ghostly lips kissed the very tips of her fingers. ”And I do not mean to prove a distraction. May all the saints go with you.”

Then the air went thick with vague calls and whispers. Saara repeated the one name ”Damiano” and sat as still and unyielding as a rock.

One sound rose among the others: that of a man's laughter. But this was not Ruggerio, though it was a voice she recognized. ”The greatest witch in the Italics,” it pro nounced, and then laughed again. ”For a while perhaps. Perhaps stronger than I. But my son was another matter, wasn't he, Saara? My poor, half-blind, mozzarella boy! Who'd have thought it?”

Saara sat as rigid as wood, as stone, and chided her heart for pounding like a hammer. No response she gave to this spirit, and soon it sighed. ”Ah. Well, no matter, Saara. G.o.d go with you.”

And it was gone. Surprise alone nearly made Saaras eyes crack open, but she restrained herself To think that thirty years of bitterness and fear toward Guillermo Delstrego could lead to this. ”G.o.d go with you?”

Had the proud, predatory soul of Delstrego bent to that? She had grown to think the man almost the equivalent of the Liar himself in his wickedness.

Her strength trembled and came near to breaking at this touch to an ancient wound.

But now the hilltop was filled with a confusion of spirits and sounds and the witch's guards came up by instinct.

Presences surrounded her like a roomful of smoke rings, half erased by the moving air. These were perhaps spirits who knew her or had touched somehow her long life, or were by some unknown sympathy attracted to the stern, unseeing woman in white linen, who held the gate open and yet spoke to no one.

For though the spell is called a summoning spell, its effect and its danger is that it brings the user very close to that world which is not a world (being placeless and infinite), wherein a living mortal has no business to wander.

And though there was no malice in the vague fingers that touched Saara, or in the soft whispers that questioned her, there was also not one of them without the power to do Saara great harm (should she letthem), or to cause her great pain (whether she let them or not).

She took a deep, shuddering breath and her nostrils twitched, as though the air were too thick to breathe. ”Damiano!” she called again, this time with a touch of urgency.

There was a moments silence, and then came a small voice, a sweet child's piping voice, speaking the language of her northern people. ”Mama?” it cried wonderingly. ”Is it Mama?”

She gave a despairing gasp. ”Go to sleep, baby,” she whispered into the blackness, while tears escaped the confines of her closed eyes. ”Go back to bed. I will come to you soon.”

Now it was late and she had almost no strength left to hold the gate and fight the river of innocent, deadly voices. She had a sudden, desperate idea.. ”Little white dog,” she called out. ”Little white dog of Damiano's. Spot, or whatever your name was... come to me.”

”Macchiata,” was the matter-of fact answer, which came from very close in front. Saara held to this spirit and let the rest go. She opened her eyes.

Sitting before her, legs splayed, was a very pretty plump girl with hair that shone silver in the moonlight. Her garb, also, was a simple white s.h.i.+ft that gleamed without stain, with a red kerchief which tied about the neck and spread out across her back, sailor fas.h.i.+on. She had little wings like those of a pigeon.

She smiled at Saara with bright interest. Her eyes were brown.

”Some mistake,” murmured the witch. ”I summoned only a dog. A little white dog which belonged to...”

”To Master-Damiano. Yes, that's me.” She started to scratch her spectral left ear with her spectral left hand in short, choppy forward motions. She seemed to get great satisfaction out of doing this.

”Damiano likes me in this form.”

”He does?” Saara exclaimed with somewhat affronted surprise. Then she remembered Damiano's peculiar prejudice toward the human form above that of all animals, however splendid. ”Well, I thought the dog looked perfectly fine.”

Macchiata was still for a moment, and then resumed scratching. She metamorphosed between one stroke and the next, going from girl to dog, and continued her scratch quite contentedly with her hind leg.

”Like that?”

”Lovely,” stated Saara.

The deep brown eyes regarded Saara, asking no questions. The white dog smiled with all her formidable teeth exposed and her red tongue lolling to the right. Her fluffy pigeon wings scratched one another's backs behind her.

Saara had not forgotten how last she had seen this animal, frozen like a starved deer in the snow, with her dark master above her, equally frozen with grief. She said, ”You died by my hand, dog. But it was not by my intent.”

Macchiata pulled her tongue in. Under the spell she had attained an almost lifelike solidity, but still she glowed with milk-gla.s.s light. ”I remember-I think. You were upset.”

”I was,” admitted the greatest witch of the Italics. ”Upset and afraid, and I struck thinking only of defending myself. Do you forgive me, spirit?”

The dog, in reply, flopped over on her back. ”Sure. Why not? Scratch under my left elbow; I can't reach.”

Saara obeyed and was surprised to feel warm fur beneath her hand. ”Have you fleas, then?”

”No.” As the human's hand rubbed in expanding circles, the dog's left foot began a spastic, regular pawing of the air. Macchiata grunted like a pig. ”No. No fleas in heaven. Only scratching.”

Saara settled back on her heels and looked about her. The moon was descending the western sky; the night was getting old. ”Spirit, I haven't much time. Will you help me find your master? I called and he could not hear me.”

”He heard you,” said Macchiata, flipping onto her legs. She gave a great shake. ”Everyone heard you..You called very loud. He just wouldn't come.”

Saara felt a cold needle of misery pierce through her. She was some time in answering. ”He...

wouldn't come?”

”No.” The dog's nostril's twitched, smelling the salt in Saara's tears. ”Don't get upset! He stayed away so you wouldn't get upset. He wanted to come.”

Saara swallowed, beyond words for a moment. Finally she said, ”I have to see him about Raphael. If I can't help Raphael, I will be very upset.”

Macchiata's sticklike tail thumped appreciatively. ”I like Raphael. He has never been upset. Never.”

”That could change,” replied Saara ominously, ”unless we help him.”

”I'll get Master,” announced the dog, and she faded like an afterimage on the eye.

Once Macchiata was gone, Saara wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her s.h.i.+rt and blew her nose into a handful of birch leaves. She had been shaken by every pull on her living memory, and the spirit that had refused to come had shaken her hardest. Had there been some malice in the little creature, to say so brutally ”He wouldn't come”? Indeed, the summoning spell was the most dangerous of all spells, to soul and to body, for now that she had done it, she felt hardly the strength or the desire to go on living.