Those Who Go by Night by Andrew Gaddes

Author:Andrew Gaddes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books

CHAPTER 14

With grief we discover that there are many who are Christians only in name; many who turn away from the light which once was theirs, and allow their minds to be so clouded with the darkness of error as to enter into a league with death and a compact with hell. The very thought of it wrings our soul with anguish. They sacrifice to demons and adore them, they make or cause to be made images, rings, mirrors, phials, or some such thing in which by the arts of magic evil spirits are to be enclosed. From them they seek and receive replies, and ask aid in satisfying their evil desires. For a foul purpose they submit to the foulest slavery.

—Pope John XXII, Decretal Super Illius Specula (1326)

The sulfur match sputtered and flared into life, just long enough to light the candle, creating a wavering half-light in the midst of the darkness.

The witch took up the lump of beeswax and began pressing her fingers into it. Pulling, twisting, stretching, and shaping. She worked quietly and confidently, softening the wax with the warmth of her hands, slowly teasing it into the crude shape of a man.

Intense black eyes caught the light and glittered as she drew the figure closer, shaving the wax now with a thin splinter carved from a dog’s bone. It had to be bone, not metal. And from a loyal hound, a bitch, sacrificed under a full moon. The witch knew these things. She had learned them from her mother, who had been taught by her own mother before her, and so on for generations past. Every detail had to be attended to and perfect.

Smiling, she began the finer work, etching the lines of fingers, toes, mouth, and even cock, before dabbing on color with the quill of a cockerel feather. A feather from a cockerel strangled underwater, mind, not a pigeon. That was a common mistake that marked the unknowing. The eyes had to be a soft brown, almost hazel. The tincture had taken some time to prepare, and she had tested and discarded several pastes until satisfied she had the color exact. It did not do to hasten such an important aspect. The more exact the poppet, the stronger the spell.

Nothing else was needed. She had already melted a single strand of dark hair into the wax before molding it. It didn’t have to be hair, but hair worked well in most cases. She had seen others who would affix the hair to the poppet’s head. That made no sense at all to the witch. The poppet had to contain the essence of the person, to absorb it. And besides, a single hair on a bald waxen head looked plain silly and could easily come adrift.

The witch looked down admiringly. It was perfect, the proportions exact, and the eyes almost lifelike. She passed the poppet high over the flame. Once, twice, three times. There was magic in the number three; even the Christians with their Holy Trinity knew this to be true.

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