Cornwall rose to a sitting position, shaking his head, his hand groping for the sword.
He gazed up at Jones, saying to him out of the fog that filled his brain, "You hit me. You hit me with your fist. A peasant way of fighting."
"Keep your hand off that toad-stabber of yours," said Jones, "or I'll cream you once again. All I did, my friend, was save your precious life."
22
When Cornwall knocked, the witch opened the door. "Ai," she said to Mary, "so you came back again. I always knew you would. Since the day I took you down that road, I knew you'd come back to us. I took you down the road into the Borderland, and I patted you on your little fanny and told you to go on. And you went on, without ever looking back, but you didn't fool me none. I knew you would be back once you'd growed a little, for there was something fey about you, and you would not fit into the world of humans. You could never fool Old Granny…»
"I was only three years old," said Mary, "maybe less than that. And you are not my granny. You never were my granny. I never till right now laid my eyes upon you."
"You were too young to know," said the witch, "or knowing, to remember. I would have kept you here, but the times were parlous and unsettled, and it seemed best to take you from enchanted ground. Although it wrenched my heart to do so, for I loved you, child."
"This is all untrue," Mary said to Cornwall. "I have no memory of her. She was not my granny. She was not…"
"But," said the witch, "I did take you down the road into the Borderland. I took your trusting little hand in mine and as I hobbled down the road, being much crippled with arthritis at the time, you skipped along beside me and you chattered all the way."
"I could not have chattered," Mary said. "I never was a chatterer."
The house was as Mary had described it, an old and rambling house set upon its knoll, and below the knoll, a brook that rambled laughing down the valley, with a stone bridge that spanned its gleaming water. A clump of birch grew at one corner of the house, and down the hill was a lilac hedge, an interrupted hedge that started and ended with no apparent purpose, a hedge that hedged in nothing. Beyond the lilacs a clump of boulders lay and in the land across the creek was a marshy pool.
The rest of the party waited by the stone bridge, looking up the hill toward the porch, where Mary and Cornwall stood before the open door.
"You always were a perverse child," said the witch. "Always in the way of playing nasty tricks, although that was just a childish way that many children have, and no flaw in character. You pestered the poor ogre almost unendurably, popping sticks and stones and clods down into his burrow so that the poor thing got scarcely any sleep. You may be surprised to know that he remembers you rather more kindly than you have the right to deserve. When he heard you were on your way, he expressed the hope of seeing you. Although, being an ogre with great dignity, he cannot bring himself to come calling on you; if you want to see him, you must wait upon him."
"I remember the ogre," said Mary, "and how we threw stuff down into his den. I don't think I ever saw him, although I may have. I've often thought about him and at times have wondered if there really were an ogre. People said there was, but I never saw him, so I couldn't know."
"Indeed, there is an ogre," said the witch, "and most agreeable. But I forget myself. I was so overcome with seeing you again, my dear, that I fear I have been impolite. I have left you standing here when I should have invited you in to tea. And I have not addressed one word of welcome to this handsome gallant who serves as your escort. Although," she said, addressing Cornwall, "I do not know who you are, there have been marvelous tales about you and the members of your company. And you as well," she said to Mary. "I see you no longer have the horn of the unicorn. Don't tell me you lost it."
"No, I have not lost it," said Mary. "But it was an awkward thing to carry. It seemed so much like bragging to carry it all the time. I left it with the others who are waiting at the bridge."
"Ah, well," said the witch, "I'll see it later on. Once I'd heard of it, I had counted so much on the sight of it. You'll show it to me, won't you?"
"Of course I will," said Mary.
The old crone tittered. "I have never seen the horn of a unicorn," she said, "and strange as it may seem, I have never seen a unicorn. The beasts are very rare, even in this land. But let us now go in and sit us down to tea. Just the three of us, I think. It'll be so much cozier with just the three of us. I'll send a basket of cakes down to those waiting at the bridge. The kind of cakes, my dear, that you always liked—the ones with seeds in them."
She opened the door wider and made a motion with her hand, signaling them to come in. The entry hall was dark, and there was a dankness in it.
Mary halted. "It doesn't feel the same," she said. "Not the way I remember it. This house once was bright and full of light and laughter."
"It's your imagination," the witch said sharply. "You always were the one with imagination. You were the one who dreamed up the games you played with that silly troll who lived underneath the bridge and that daffy Fiddlefingers." She cackled with remembering. "You could talk them into anything. They hated mud-pie making, but they made mud pies for you. And they were scared striped of the ogre, but when you threw stones down into his burrow, they went along and threw their share of stones. You say that I'm a witch, with my humped back and my arthritic hobble and my long and crooked nose, but you are a witch as well, my darling, and a better one than I am."
"Hold there," said Cornwall, his hand going to the sword hilt. "Milady's not a witch."
The old crone reached out a bony hand and laid it gently on his arm. "It's a compliment I pay her, noble sir. There is nothing better said of any woman than that she's a witch."
Grumbling, Cornwall let his arm drop. "Watch your tongue," he said.
She smiled at them with snaggled teeth and led the way down the dark, damp, and musty hall into a small room carpeted with an old and faded rug. Against one wall stood a tiny fireplace blackened by the smoke of many fires. Sunlight poured through wide windows to illuminate the shabbiness of the place. A row of beaten-up house-plants stood on a narrow shelf below the windowsill. In the center of the room stood a magnificently carved table covered by a scarf, and on the scarf was a silver tea service.
She motioned them to chairs, then sat down behind the steaming teapot.
Reaching for a cup, she said, "Now we may talk of many things, of the olden days and how times have changed and what you might be doing here."
"What I want to talk about," said Mary, "are my parents. I know nothing of them. I want to know who they were and why they were here and what happened to them."
"They were good people," said the witch, "but very, very strange. Not like other humans. They did not look down their noses at the people of the Wasteland. They had no evil in them, but a great depth of understanding. They would talk with everyone they met. And the questions they could ask—oh, land sake, the questions they could ask. I often wondered why they might be here, for they seemed to have no business. A vacation, they told me, but it is ridiculous to think that sophisticated people such as they should come to a place like this for their vacation. If it was a vacation, it was a very long one; they were here almost a year. Doing nothing all that time but walking around the countryside and being nice to everyone they met. I can remember the day they came walking down the road and across the bridge, the two of them, my dear, with you between them, toddling along, with each of them holding one of your hands, as if you might need their help, although you never needed any help, then or any other time. Imagine the nerve of them and the innocence of them, two humans walking calmly down a Wasteland road, with their baby toddling between them, walking as if they were out for a stroll of an April afternoon. If there were anyone here in all this land who might have done them any harm, they would have been so shook up by the innocent, trusting arrogance of them that they would have stayed their hand. I can remember them coming up to this house and knocking on the door, asking if they might stay with me and I, of course, good-hearted creature that I am, who finds it hard to say no to anyone…"