The White Witch by Elizabeth Goudge

Author:Elizabeth Goudge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Elizabeth Goudge books;best historical fiction;Christian fiction;classic literature;historical fiction
ISBN: 9781619708655
Publisher: Hendrickson Publishers
Published: 2016-01-28T00:00:00+00:00

3

When the sun set that evening the gypsies were once more at home, settled as comfortably into the hollow by Flowercote Wood as though they had never gone away. It was a clear frosty evening and their fire crackled and burnt merrily, orange and gold against the dim blue of the twilight. The women sang at their work and the children laughed about the fire. Madona sat holding her thin hands to the blaze and called, “Alamina.” Her granddaughter was, she knew, in the tent behind her, but there was no answer to her call. She repeated it sternly. “Alamina. I call.”

Her power was still great and Alamina came reluctantly and stood beside her. She was dressed, Madona noted, in her best. She wore her coral necklace and her green skirt and her bodice was laced with blue ribbon. She was combing her hair, a thing she did only upon the rarest occasions. The frost had got into it and it clung crackling to her comb. Sparks came from it and there were sparks in her eyes.

“Tshai, oh my lovely daughter, where are you going?” Madona asked sternly.

“Oh my pûri-dai, oh my lovely grandmother, that is nothing to you,” said Alamina cheekily.

She laughed, her white teeth flashing, and the strands of her dark hair seemed to stand out all around her head like spitting snakes as she combed. Madona wondered, not for the first time, how she had come to be the mother of the mother of this creature of lightning and storm.

“You are not yet of the Devil, daughter,” she said, “but you are not good, and that which you purpose in your heart is not good. Feel after no evil things, my daughter, go to no evil places, for the fingers of the beng creep this way and that, thin and searching, and not easily to be torn away once they have fastened on you.”

She looked up earnestly at Alamina, but Alamina had disappeared.

She was already running over the field, her flying feet leaving light prints in the frosted grass. In the west the sky was smoky orange. It was growing cold yet she needed no shawl for she was on fire and sparkling with the sweetness of the revenge to which she ran. Nevertheless, when a little later she walked up Mother Skipton’s path she felt a slight shiver of apprehension, for the lights had gone now from the west and it seemed very dark in the little garden. When the jackdaw, hanging in its cage outside the door, squawked loudly, she jumped. She knocked at the door and called softly, “Tshovihawni! Tshovihawni!”

Mother Skipton opened at once, for she had learned never to keep anyone waiting lest being afraid they changed their minds and went away. “Have no fear, pretty child,” she said gently. “Come in and tell your trouble. There are few troubles I cannot help. You are in love?”

Alamina stepped in and she shut the door, then held the candle up to look at her visitor.

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