Black Pearls - Louise Hawes [48]
It required only a pinch of time, a trifling minute, to change my life. As soon as the dame had raised her arm and begun her chant, I felt the stiffness invade my limbs. "Ye shall not rule the roost, ye shall not call the tune." As she recited the words, the old woman spread her knobby fingers like a cap across my head. " But shall serve your master with nary a boon."
It happened so quickly that even as I smiled at such nonsense, my legs went numb and I closed my eyes against a sharp pain that filled my chest. "With a lively will, though it be not your own, ye shall do my bidding and make no moan." No sooner had the pain stopped than my aunt screamed and I opened my eyes. I found that, indeed, my chest had been ripped open and that a shining bone erupted from between my breasts. I suppose it is a testament to the crone's witchery that I now felt no discomfort. I was dismayed only that my dress was ruined and my flesh turned the color of the coins my aunt had fished from Lord Brevington's doublet as he lay beyond the cares of earth.
Stranger, or should I say more horrible still, I saw that from the golden mote which pierced my chest, in a formation I knew only too well from hours and hours of practice, hung twenty harp strings. And where were these strings fastened? Why, all along my body, which, as I have said, had turned to burnished gold. I wanted to scream just as my aunt had when I saw, at the place where each string pierced my shining flesh, tiny blood drops lined like buttons up and down my chest and belly and thighs. But I could no more scream than speak or make the slightest movement to free myself from the spell that held me fast.
"What have you done, you foul fiend?" Aunt Hazel was crying now, beating the old woman about her venerable head. "Bring her back this instant, bring her back!" When her tormentor stopped to wipe her eyes, the hag rushed for the front door, but Aunt yanked her by the apron strings and forced her to stand before me.
Dame Meredith, squirming like a pig in my aunt's grasp, seemed as surprised as anyone at her handiwork. "'Tis only a minding spell," she protested, staring at my strings, my golden limbs. "'Twill make dogs obey and keep horses from leaping the fence."
"My niece is no dog, beldame." Despite my peril, I was moved by Aunt's tears and would have comforted her if I could. "You have pierced her through and turned her still as stone."
"I meant no harm, mistress." Meredith reached out to touch me, then pulled her hand back as if she had felt fire. "No harm at all, I swear."
"Undo your spell, witch," Aunt Hazel commanded. "And be quick."
"I cannot." The fear in the dame's eyes made it all too clear she spoke the truth. "I do not know how." She explained to Aunt that no one had ever asked her to reverse the spell; every one preferred dogs that minded and horses that stayed where they were put.
But Aunt Hazel would not rest till the witch had tried to un-spell me. And tried. And tried. Finally, exhausted and hopeless, the old woman threw her apron over her head and wept as if her heart would break. "'Tis no use, my lady," she sobbed. "The child will not wake. She lives only to obey."
"Obey?" My aunt, nearly as tired as the witch, gathered the strength to shake our neighbor by the shoulders. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"Whatever you last wanted her to do, madam," Meredith told her, "is what she will do forever."
"I wanted her to play." Aunt Hazel looked at me now, her voice as small as a child's. "I wanted her to play a song."
"Then you have only to ask it," the witch told her, drying her eyes and making for the door. "Perhaps it is not so bad, after all." She sniffled as she lifted the latch, ducked her head at me. "You need not feed her, from