The Witch of Maracoor by Gregory Maguire

Author:Gregory Maguire [Maguire, Gregory]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

4

It was the first time she’d been truly alone since, after leaving her father’s hermitage near Nether How, Iskinaary had caught up with her. Just before she’d stumbled upon the Nonestic Sea. During the months of this failed campaign—for here she was returning with the reconstituted Grimmerie, after all—the Goose had stuck by her side. Stubborn, argumentative, disapproving, but loyal. His abandonment of her now, at the end of her quest, might be a credit to his superior moral sense—but she hated him for it.

She tried to ignore her angry conclusions and couldn’t; tried to solve for x, if x was her unknowable self, and failed. The higher math of ethical justification exceeded her grasp. He was an Animal and she, she was—well, even to call herself an animal was, perhaps, an insult to blameless creatures of the wild. She was a mere human. She thought, Why isn’t there an uppercase Human to distinguish from a human. Maybe we just haven’t gotten there yet. Maybe we can’t.

Because the wind was going that way, she headed north-northeast. She’d crossed these mountains on foot a year earlier; presumably she’d make better time now. Her eyes teared up as she saw the rumpled brown burlap of sullen land begin to support cliff oak. Mountain thorn tortured into ghoul shape by relentless wind. Then the smack of aroma, the pines that made their home by the billions up and down the thousand-mile brace of ice-topped mountains. It was a jolt of childhood this high in the atmosphere.

Attempting to fly over the high peaks on her own would be courting suicide. She couldn’t guess how the mighty winds met and battered each other at such points. She’d have to cross through hanging valleys, searching out portage on foot until it seemed safe to launch again. Without the Goose to give her the benefit of his long life of navigation, she was, she saw, inept at this.

But the slopes of the Great Kells gave more succor than the swells of the sea or the scrub growth of the Thousand Year Grasslands. There would be forage. Canyons, caves, even the odd hunter’s lean-to in which to seek shelter. This much she did remember from her outgoing trip. Wild blueberries on exposed escarpments; fresh water in mountain rills. Fish if she could manage it; the edible vine, the beaded purse of mountain grape. Nuts, maybe. Depending. Yes, and here was a trapper’s lodge, ready to borrow for the night.

She returned with supplies to make an almost decent meal for herself, gobbled it down in ten minutes while the sky stayed stubbornly daylight. Not having Iskinaary with whom to kick things around was proving a trial. She found herself fingering the cover of the Grimmerie—out of boredom if nothing else.

What she would do with it now that it had homed to her—she hadn’t gotten there yet. But she turned some pages. They all seemed to have restitched themselves somehow—nothing loose fluttered out. For the lack of evidence of the soaking it had taken, she might never have drowned it.

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