Page 25 of The Moon Sister
‘Sit down,’ he said in heavily accented English, pointing to the only other seat in the room, which was a roughly fashioned stool set near the woodburner.
‘Go ahead. I’m happy on the floor,’ Zara said as she grabbed a pillow from the brass bed to soften what was just bare concrete below us.
‘Hotchiwitchi!’ Chilly exclaimed suddenly, his bent clawlike forefinger wagging at me. Then he threw back his head and laughed as if he was delighted. ‘Pequeña bruja!’
‘Don’t worry, he’s always talking gibberish in English and Spanish,’ muttered Zara. ‘Dad says he speaks some of the old Romani language too.’
‘Right,’ I said, though I was pretty sure Chilly had just called me a witch.
Chilly had finally disengaged his eyes from me and was refilling his pipe with what looked like moss. Once it was lit again, he smiled at me.
‘Speak English or Spanish?’
‘English and French, but only a little Spanish.’
Chilly clucked in disapproval and sucked on his pipe.
‘Have you been taking the pills the doctor gave you?’ enquired Zara from her pillow.
Chilly turned to look at her with a mixture of mirth and derision in his eyes. ‘Poison! They do try to kill me with that modern medicine.’
‘Chilly, they’re painkillers and anti-inflammatories for your arthritis. They help you.’
‘Use my own ways,’ he stated as he raised his chin to the wood-cladded ceiling. ‘And you will too . . .’ He pointed to me. ‘Give me your hands,’ he ordered.
I held them out as asked, palms up, and Chilly took them in his own, his touch surprisingly soft. I felt a tingle in my fingertips that grew stronger and stronger as he traced the lines on my palm and gently squeezed each finger in turn. Finally he looked up at me.
‘So, your magic is in these,’ he declared, indicating my hands. ‘You help the small creatures of the earth . . .los animales. This your gift.’
‘Right,’ I said, casting a puzzled glance at Zara, who merely shrugged.
‘Brujapower. But not complete, because your blood not pure, see? What is it you do, Hotchiwitchi?’
‘You mean my job?’
He nodded and I explained. When I’d finished, he looked at me and clucked.
‘Wasted. Your power here.’ He gestured towards my hands and my heart. ‘Not there.’ He pointed to my head.
‘Oh,’ I said, offended. ‘Well, at least my zoology degree helps me understand animal behaviour.’
‘What use the statistics and the paperwork and the computer machines?’ He waggled his bony finger at me again. ‘You choose wrong path.’
‘Did you eat that turkey I brought down yesterday?’ Zara butted in, seeing my obvious distress. She stood up and walked to a corner of the cabin to open an old dresser, which contained a number of dented tins and a mish-mash of crockery.
‘Sí. Bleurgh!’ Chilly made sick noises. ‘Old bird.’
‘Oh well, today it’s turkey soup.’ Zara shrugged as she took a tin bowl from the dresser, filled it with soup from the flask she’d brought with her, added bread and a spoon and took it over to him. ‘Right, you eat that and I’ll go and get you some more wood.’ Picking up a log basket, Zara left the hut.
I watched Chilly slurp up the soup mouthful after mouthful as if he wasn’t even tasting it. When he had emptied the bowl, he put it down beside him, wiped his mouth with his forearm and lit up his pipe again.
‘You feel the Spirit of the Earth, sister?’
‘Yes, I do,’ I whispered, surprised that, for the first time, I understood exactly what he meant.
‘“Is it real?” you ask.’
‘Yes, I do.’
