Ширли Мерфи - The Grass Tower

A chill touched Bethany. “Could he have imagined a witch so—so real as we saw? Maybe he— Maybe it was a mixture of things, maybe someone’s face, someone he knew? Was it our red hair, then, that made him afraid of us?”

“I think it could be. I think he really believes there was a witch.”

When she told Grandfather about Mr. Krupp’s vision, he stood staring out at the fog silently for so long that she wondered if he had heard her. He turned at last, paused to pull the curtains against the fog, then changed his mind, pushing them back. The foghorn cried, beautifully wild. He seemed so preoccupied that Justin, beside the blazing fire feeding it with small sticks, watched him curiously.

Reid was quiet, watching Zebulon too; and at last, when Zebulon did not speak, Reid said tentatively, “Grandfather has this idea the hill is evil. He never let me go on that part of the dunes when I was small, and sometimes he called it a witching hill. Then Ma would give him a tongue-lashing and say he was too old to believe in superstitions, and not to put them into my head.”

Justin said softly, “You never let us go there, either, Father.”

“I didn’t want you to grow up believing in witchcraft,” Zebulon said shortly. “I didn’t want you playing witch games with the village children.”

“But some people believe in witchcraft,” Ninea said. “In Panama they make things really happen with voodoo.” She glanced defiantly at Bethany. “They can even kill people with it.” And bring them back to life, she was thinking, but she didn’t say that. Bethany couldn’t be sure whether she was being nasty, now, or putting her on just to see what she would do.

Zebulon looked across at Ninea sternly. “If witchcraft has appeared to work sometimes, Ninea, that could very well be coincidence. And don’t forget, people can die from fear alone if they believe in something hard enough.” It was the only time Bethany could remember seeing him angry—not in a temper, but quietly strongly resistive to Ninea’s ideas. She could feel the strength within him, a steady sureness of focus. “But even beyond death through fear,” he continued, “if some voodoo spells did work, there could possibly be another explanation altogether, and not a magic one.”

“What else could there be?” Ninea said incredulously.

“Did you ever wonder about this power you three have? Did you ever wonder where it came from, ever think that perhaps it was part of something larger that we cannot really grasp?”

“I—I don’t know,” Ninea said reluctantly. “Yes, maybe. Do you mean that when it seems as if something is witchcraft, it’s really part of that, of the same thing we can do?”

“Yes, I think that it could be. Not magic at all, but part of a spiritual power that man has not yet learned to understand. A power that he touches quite by accident and really can’t control.”

Reid, silent and sprawled on the floor with a pillow under his head, sat up slowly and looked at Zebulon. “But if that’s so,” he said, “Then—well, witchcraft and voodoo are evil, but if they’re part of some spiritual thing—are you saying that our spirit selves can be evil?”

“I don’t think they are evil, but I think they can be turned to evil. I think that our free will permits us to turn to evil if we wish to.”

“That would be a fallen soul,” Ninea said quietly.

“Yes, I suppose that in the terms of formal religion, it would be.” He studied Ninea. Bethany could feel her resistance, her unwillingness to accept that the touching of darkness was a matter of choice, that you could refuse its pull if you would.

“But why—” Bethany began. “Why—”

“Don’t you see?” Reid said. “It’s chance! If the power couldn’t be turned to evil, then everything would be good all the time, and there wouldn’t be— Well, you wouldn’t have to make a choice, about anything.”

“Yes,” Zebulon said, “man would have no challenge. If he could not choose, then he would have no chance to grow, to become more than what he started with. I think there can be no life of any sort without this element of challenge. Man must know the chance to fail, to fall, the very essence of a vigorous life is the ever-present knowledge that we can fail. And of course, too, without evil we would not recognize goodness. But if we can touch the darkness, then we can tap the power that is positive just as surely, the very force behind the creation of life itself. I’m convinced of it.”

“It would be like a test, then,” Reid said. “Like evolution. Whether you could—could rise to the challenge, I guess.”

“Yes,” Zebulon said slowly. “A survival of the fittest, but in the terms of souls rather than just animal fitness.” He smiled and lifted his coffee cup. “But whatever the truth of our existence, we can only guess, only conjecture about it.”

“But if you go to church,” Bethany said slowly, “it seems as if they tell you how it is. As if there’s no question.”

Zebulon looked down at her, and nodded. “Some churches seem to. In centuries past, when man knew so little, formalized beliefs helped explain the world around him, the stars, the sun, the bitter elements that ruled his life. Why he got sick. But now, when we understand so much more, some feel we can best approach the mysteries through life itself, through science and through our more mature methods of observation.

“Yet many people still need the security of formal religion; they find it much safer to follow any kind of organized belief than to stand completely alone and face the mystery of one’s own origins.”

Justin rose from the hearth and stood with her back to the fire, looking down at Reid. “If we are meant to strive, if we are being tested, then those who, by chance, are able to touch the minds of others, their burden and responsibility is heavier.” Bethany could not tell whether Justin was speaking of her and Ninea, or of herself.

“I don’t see why,” Ninea said. “It’s not their fault they can.”

“But it’s an increased opportunity for good,” Justin said. “If you have been given more power for good or evil, then you have a greater burden.”

“But we didn’t ask for it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Bethany said. “That’s the whole point—chance. You don’t ask for it, but if it’s true we’re being tested, you have to do all you can with what you get. And maybe—if there are other lives, like Grandfather said once, could what we do now effect what we will become later?”

‘This could be so,” Zebulon said. “There is so much we can’t conceive of. And yet we know so much more than, say, sixteenth-century man. What will we be able to glimpse of all this in four more centuries? What will it be given to us to know if we are to live other lives? We might be able to look back on all this, on tonight, as the most primal and humble strivings of souls hardly out of diapers!”

“Grandfather,” Ninea said, suddenly very intent, as if she had caught some vision that touched his inner thoughts, “Who was the woman with red hair? Why did we see her?” She seemed excited; and Bethany reached out, trying to see too. The picture came clear, sharp, the woman’s red hair tangling in the wind as she climbed the grass tower, a picture so vivid that Justin, seeing it also caught her breath and sat frozen, staring up at Zebulon.

Justin’s look changed from amazement to disbelief, but Zebulon only looked at her innocently. Then at last a twitch of a grin started at the corner of his mouth.

“Oh, Father,” Justin said, and it was not clear whether her tone was one of censure or puzzlement or suppressed amusement.

“Have you guessed?” Zebulon said softly.

“I don’t need to guess. I saw her. I think it’s time you told us.”