The Witch Doctor

I had to do a little rewriting there, since rhyme seemed to be important here-but under the circumstances, I didn't think Shakespeare would mind.

The fireball dimmed, darkened, and took a nosedive for the ground. By the time it hit, it was only a smoking cinder.

Sobaka stared at it.

Then she snapped her glare up to me, and I have never seen so much malice in a pair of human eyes. "Villain! Aroint thee! If you wilt not bend to my will, you shall break!" She began to move her hands in some sort of jagged pattern, chanting in a language I didn't know, though it sounded like Latin.

I gave her a grim smile. She must have thought that if I didn't know the words, I wouldn't realize she was versifying - but I could recognize rhymes when I heard them, and the meter was strong enough to slice up for seasoning. Well, if she wanted to have a contest slinging verses, that was okay with me.

Or maybe it wasn't. There was a huge rumble, and the ground heaved beneath my feet. I fell, instinctively turning to land on my side and roll as Sensei had taught me-and saw a jagged crack opening the earth where I'd been standing. The hair on the back of my neck prickled. How had she known an earth tremor was coming?

But it was my turn, and the minor chasm made me remember an old hard-times song. I made a few modifications:

"Well, if I had it, why, you could have it,
But I ain't got it-I'm down and out.
And now I've had it-with you, I've had it,
So now I'll send it, and end this bout.
She gave me trouble
On a scale that's Richter,
So from the rubble
Now I have picked her.
And I will drop her Into a deep hole
That will stop her From hurting people.
And this old clown
Will be unfound
As she sinks down, down, down."

The earth rumbled again, and a hole opened right under the old woman's feet. She dropped like a stone.

I stared.

Sobaka screamed.

I was so flabbergasted, I couldn't think of anything to do until she had disappeared. Then I came to and leapt over to the hole to tell her not to panic, I'd dig her out-never mind that she'd been threatening to kill me-but she was wailing, "Air! Nay, give me air!" I looked down the hole and saw two very wide and frightened eyes peering up out of the darkness about ten feet below me. "The earth, the earth presses in all about me! Spare me, Wizard! I shall trouble you no more! Only release me! Do not let the earth fall in on me, I pray! " "Holy cow!" I gulped. I had just put a claustrophobic in a hole.

"Enough, right now!"

I heard a moo.

I froze. I didn't want to look up.

But the wailing down below roused my guilt; I had to do something. I looked up slowly, straight into the big brown eyes of a leanlooking bovine female. It had a hump on its back - a Brahma cow. Coincidence. Pure coincidence. Obviously, I was closer to India than I had thought.

I turned back to the hole, assured that the cow wouldn't bother me. "Just keep calm! We'll get you out of there!"

"Be quick," she wailed, "before my master seizes the chance to take my soul!"

I froze again.

Then I said "No taking of souls allowed. Not while the person's still living."

"Aye, but death might happen thus! The master needs but a slight chance, a crumbling of the earthen wall, to bring about a natural death! Then he can take me, and I am doomed forevermore!"

"He?" I frowned. "You're talking about the Devil?"

"Do not say his name!" she wailed. "Or you will hear the rustle of leathery wings!

I was about to object, saying that was only a superstition. Then I remembered the cow, and decided I didn't want any more coincidences.

"Look, as long as you've lived a good life by your own beliefs, you've got nothing to be afraid of."

"But I have not!" she wailed. "I have been as evil as I might! I have sold my soul for power over my fellows!"

"Sold your soul?" I stared. "Why the hell-uh, heck?-would you do a dumb thing like that?"

"I was ugly, and small, and shrewish, and all shunned me.

'Sobaka,' they said, 'you are so ugly, even the swine will spurn you! You are stupid, Sobaka - step aside.' ' 'Tis done badly, Sobaka-you can never do anything right!' 'Not even I could love you, Sobaka, and I am your mother!' 'Do not sing, Sobaka, you have the voice of a crow!'

Until, at last, hate waked like a burning coal in my breast, and I swore I would someday have power to make them all suffer, to rue the day they had mocked me! But I could see no way to it, till the master appeared to me in a dream!"

I couldn't believe it. Not only a paranoid with a five-star inferiority complex-it had blossomed into raving delusions. She had actually convinced herself that she had sold her soul! All of a sudden, I could understand how come she had dug herself under when she'd heard my verse-it had fitted into her delusional system and had convinced her subconscious that she'd been overwhelmed by a spell. And since I wouldn't sign up with the Devil, presumably I had the force of good behind me, which is always stronger than evil in the end-at least, in the sort of medieval culture this seemed to be-so she'd been convinced my spell had taken over anything she could dream up. Selling her soul was a metaphor for having dedicated herself to evil, of course. She had probably managed to become a minor bureaucrat just by toadying to the people in power-but she had convinced herself she was damned.

I couldn't let her die in that kind of agony, no matter what she'd been trying to do to me. "Look," I said, "even if you sold your soul, you can still get it back. All you have to do is repent, tell God you're sorry and won't do it again!"

"But what if I should live?" she cried, in an agony of indecision. "If I should repent and live, I would be the lowest of the low! All whom I have wronged would rise to smite me down! The master would send agents to deprive me of what life I'd have left-though 'twould be precious little; I am more than an hundred years old already! " Delusion again-she couldn't have been a day over sixty, judging by looks. This being a medieval culture, she was probably only forty-life aged them fast, back then.

"Look," I said, "just because you were small and plain didn't mean everybody hated you."

"Yet they did! All need to know there is one lower than they!

How could they fail to despise me?"

"By your being good, way down deep," I reasoned. "Sure, they're cruel-but if they saw you were really good inside, trying hard to make up for everything mean you did, they'd start liking you." There was silence down at the bottom of that hole. Then, almost shyly, "Do you truly think so?"

Well, no, I didn't, actually-just from the clues, I had a notion she had been maximally mean to everybody she'd ever known, and people aren't that quick to forgive. So I changed the subject. "It doesn't get done in a day, of course-you have to earn trust, earn forgiveness by proving you've reformed-and proving it again and again for years and years. They'll punish you at first, sure, but you deserve it by now, don't you?"

"I did not when I was a maiden!" she said hotly. "Where was their good will then?"

"That was then," I reminded. "How much punishment do you deserve now? "

It was quiet, down there in the dark. Then she began to cry. I hate the sound of a woman crying. "Please," I said. "Please don't cry. I'll get you out of there somehow."

"I have been so evil!" she wailed. "I deserve death, slow and agonizing death! Nay, what if they were to do to me as I've done to them? "