Enchanted Pilgrimage by Simak Clifford D

Author:Simak, Clifford D. [Simak, Clifford D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781504013277
Amazon: B00YTFT9F4
Goodreads: 25965901
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 1975-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

22

When Cornwall knocked, the witch opened the door.

“Ai,” she said to Mary, “so you came back again. I always knew you would. Since the day I took you down that road, I knew you’d come back to us. I took you down the road into the Borderland, and I patted you on your little fanny and told you to go on. And you went on, without ever looking back, but you didn’t fool me none. I knew you would be back once you’d growed a little, for there was something fey about you, and you would not fit into the world of humans. You could never fool Old Granny.…”

“I was only three years old,” said Mary, “maybe less than that. And you are not my granny. You never were my granny. I never till right now laid my eyes upon you.”

“You were too young to know,” said the witch, “or knowing, to remember. I would have kept you here, but the times were parlous and unsettled, and it seemed best to take you from enchanted ground. Although it wrenched my heart to do so, for I loved you, child.”

“This is all untrue,” Mary said to Cornwall. “I have no memory of her. She was not my granny. She was not …”

“But,” said the witch, “I did take you down the road into the Borderland. I took your trusting little hand in mine and as I hobbled down the road, being much crippled with arthritis at the time, you skipped along beside me and you chattered all the way.”

“I could not have chattered,” Mary said. “I never was a chatterer.”

The house was as Mary had described it, an old and rambling house set upon its knoll, and below the knoll, a brook that rambled laughing down the valley, with a stone bridge that spanned its gleaming water. A clump of birch grew at one corner of the house, and down the hill was a lilac hedge, an interrupted hedge that started and ended with no apparent purpose, a hedge that hedged in nothing. Beyond the lilacs a clump of boulders lay and in the land across the creek was a marshy pool.

The rest of the party waited by the stone bridge, looking up the hill toward the porch, where Mary and Cornwall stood before the open door.

“You always were a perverse child,” said the witch. “Always in the way of playing nasty tricks, although that was just a childish way that many children have, and no flaw in character. You pestered the poor ogre almost unendurably, popping sticks and stones and clods down into his burrow so that the poor thing got scarcely any sleep. You may be surprised to know that he remembers you rather more kindly than you have the right to deserve. When he heard you were on your way, he expressed the hope of seeing you. Although, being an ogre with great dignity, he cannot bring himself to come calling on you; if you want to see him, you must wait upon him.

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