Ursula Vernon: Razorback

“It’s my hog,” said Sal. “My friend. That hunter shot him—Paul Silas did it, and he knows full well that was my Rawhead.”

“Silas,” said Elizabeth Gray thoughtfully. “Didn’t his mother come from over by Bynum?”

“That’s him. She wasn’t a bad woman.” Sal took another slug of tea. “Good thing she’s dead. No mother ought to see what I aim to do to him.”

Elizabeth grinned. “Listen to you,” she said. “A white witch and all. What are you planning?”

“Don’t know,” said Sal honestly. “Had a thought, that’s all.”

And then she took a deep breath and said the words that witches hate to say, even to each other. “Need your help.”

The porch creaked as Elizabeth rocked in her chair. Down by the sundew pool, the plants rippled.

“What’s in it for me?” she asked. “That I ought to help you, who never did give me the time of day?”

“That ain’t fair,” said Sal. “You had your spot and I had mine. You ever asked, I’d have come. You know that.”

Elizabeth Gray knew it, even if she didn’t like to admit it. She tilted her head one way and another, and her neck bones popped and creaked like an old man’s knuckles. “It’s so. And you’re in my spot now.”

“I’ve got eighty-seven dollars,” said Sal, and laid it out on the table between the teacups.

“You should’ve said,” said Elizabeth Gray, all business. “Now, what is it you’re looking to do?”

Sal told her.

The sun moved a little bit in the sky before anyone spoke again.

“Listen,” said Elizabeth Gray, “listen close. You’re asking me to bring him back, and I can’t do that. Nobody can. You walk through that door and there’s no walking back through. You know that, Sal, you’re a witch to your teeth. You ever hear of anybody coming back for good?”

Sal stared into her empty teacup. “Thought you might have,” she said quietly. “Figured maybe there was a way.”

Elizabeth Gray shook her head, and that was truth, because witches don’t lie to each other.

Sal stood up. She went down the steps and made three paces.

Then she sank down by the pool filled with sundews and put her bony hands over her face, because her friend was dead.

Elizabeth Gray’s face didn’t change. Her heart was still like sand and triumph ran through and pity ran through and neither one sank in.

But things do grow on sand, complicated things like sundews, and something grew now in the witch’s heart that I wouldn’t try to put a name to.

“I can’t bring him back,” said Elizabeth Gray. “But if you’re willing, I can open the door.”

Sal looked up, her face streaked with an old woman’s tears.

“It’ll take your life,” said Gray, as if a witch’s life wasn’t any big thing. “Somebody’s got to shove their foot in the door. He’s all the way dead and you’re all the way alive, and if you’re willing, I can take you both halfway. I don’t swear you won’t wind up in one skin together, but it’s the best I can do.”

Sal thought about it. She thought about it hard, the way you do when every word in your head has an echo and you slam it down on the floor of your skull. She sat by the sundew pool and she thought, and Elizabeth Gray brought her another cup of tea, but all of it was second-guessing. She’d known what she was going to say as soon as Gray had made her offer.

“Do it,” Sal said.

I’m not going to tell you what the spell was like. You think I want that sort of thing being common knowledge? You need a silver spoon to see by and a half-handful of rabbit tobacco, among other things, but that’s as much as you’re going to hear. Some stuff doesn’t need to go any farther. You want to know details, go ask Elizabeth Gray.

She did the spell, anyhow. People say it was a hard spell, but I think that’s because most people don’t understand magic. It was easy, the way dying’s easy or birthing’s easy. It’s not hard, it just hurts a whole hell of a lot.

Sal sat in the sand, because it was easier that way. Her hip joints ached getting her down, and she didn’t think she’d be able to stand back up, but that didn’t matter, because she figured she wouldn’t be standing up again. Not in this life, anyhow.

The moon came up. It reflected in the pool, and Sal watched the sundews thrash and dance in a way that they don’t do by daylight. Tiny little things they were, but they moved more like mice than plants, and they leaned toward Elizabeth Gray.

She was still watching the sundews when Elizabeth came up behind her with the big hog-killing knife and slit her throat from ear to ear.

Sal woke up with a scream and a gasp, in a body that wasn’t hers.

She was hung upside down by her heels, and her whole body bucked when she moved and threw her sideways. It turned out to be a blessing, because she’d been hung up with a hook through her legs and she would have been hard pressed to free herself, but the convulsion knocked her right off the hook and onto the floor.

It was a fair bit of luck, witch’s luck, but she was in no position to appreciate it.

It hurt.

It hurt more than anything ever had, more than she thought anything ever could. She’d been dead and now she was alive, and bodies don’t much like that. When you’re dead, all your muscles go limp, even the little ones that hold tense their entire lives. They didn’t take kindly to being told to wake up and work again.

Her heart was the worst. Her heart tried to beat and there was stuff inside it that didn’t want to move. It folded up like a fist around a knife blade and sprang open again.

Sal would have given her hope of heaven to stop that heart from beating, but the magic was in it now and wouldn’t let it rest. It squeezed and opened, squeezed and opened, and inside the clotted heart, the blood broke up like ice on a river and began to flow again.

She had no idea how long she laid on the ground. It could have been hours. It felt like her entire life. But the dead body around her came back to life, slow as slow, and finally she opened her eyes and realized she was in the body of the dead razorback hog.

Ma’am? said a tiny little voice. That you?

If she’d been human, she would have cried, but hogs don’t. She made a little whimpering squealing sound and scraped her trotters along the floorboards.

“Rawhead?” (It wasn’t quite talking aloud, but he got the sense of it.)

Yes, ma’am. What happened?

“Think we’ve been dead, hon.” Sal considered. “Well, you’ve been dead, and my body probably ain’t alive if Elizabeth Gray did proper work with the knife.”

She scrabbled her feet again, trying to get up.

Let me , said Rawhead, and the ungainly body was suddenly graceful, rolling to its feet and shaking all over.

“So that’s the trick of it,” said Sal. “Lord. Not used to being down here on four legs.”

It’s easier than two.

It did seem to be. Her vision wasn’t so good, but things smelled strong, and the smells sort of worked with her eyes in a way she hadn’t expected.

“We’re in a barn, aren’t we?”

Think so, ma’am. Rawhead turned in a circle and then looked up.

There were three dead hogs hanging from hooks overhead, their throats opened up to drain into a gutter in the floor. A fourth hook hung empty.

“Huh!” Sal stared at them. “Surprised there was any blood left in us. Must be the magic. I’ll give her this, Elizabeth Gray’s no slouch with the knife.”

Those three were my friends , said Rawhead. We ran around the mountain together.

“I’m sorry,” said Sal, suddenly shamed. “I didn’t think. I’m sorry for your friends.”