One
Peace! The charm's wound up.
—MACBETH, ACT I, SCENE iii
According to Andrew, there was a witch on board. He lifted wide, dark eyes to meet mine and said, "Thora. She's here, too, on the St. Ola. She's a witch."
His shyness returned and he dropped his gaze. He turned toward the sea again as if still delighting in the view, although the craggy cliffs had disappeared into the distant haze, and this pastoral shoreline could hardly have been less dramatic.
This witch was an old argument, it seemed. Before the boy turned away, I saw the thick veil of his lashes flicker, and saw him cast a challenging glance at his mother, Johanna. Whether she noticed the look or not, she protested only mildly.
"Oh, Andrew," said Johanna, "you know she's not."
"But she is," he said, rounding back to us once more, his shyness already replaced by his eagerness to defend himself. "I saw her."
"Aye, I know she's here," Johanna said patiently, "I saw her myself. She's not a witch, I mean."
"But she told me she was. And once, last summer, I saw—" He stopped without telling us what he'd seen. He turned to me with a shrug, conceding to a distinction he seemed to consider insignificant. "Oh, all right, then, she says she's a witch."
Johanna smiled, with a shrug of her own. "Sorry, Isabel. Andrew is right, though, I must admit. The lass does say she's a witch. But she never does anything witchlike. At least, if she does I've never seen any evidence of it. Nor has anyone, so far as I know." She pushed her fingers through her hair, putting on a thoughtful expression. "Though what a witch is supposed to do in this day and age …" She trailed off, laughing.
Why couldn't Andrew have seen a ghost, instead? Scotland abounded in ghosts—romantic figures in floating dress, or wailing, clanking, clamorous ghosts. They were boasted of or grandly disregarded, or used to tempt tourists into renting haunted castles. Even the bed-and-breakfast where I had slept last night, that small, unassuming house in Inverness, claimed its own ghost, though to me it had remained silent and invisible.
But he'd said a witch, and I knew nothing of those. Except, of course, for Macbeth's witches. Everyone, even schoolboys, knew of those three. And Macbeth's witches had appeared to him not far from where we'd boarded the St. Ola, in the far north of Scotland, foretelling Macbeth's grisly future in sweet-sounding riddles, chanting, Double, double toil and trouble … as they stirred into their pot the eye of newt and toe of frog.
I pictured my schoolchildren in their tattered costumes, dancing around a papier-mâché cauldron fueled by a flickering lightbulb fire. Without intending to say it aloud, I heard myself only slightly misquoting a greeting from the play, "How now, you secret, black and midnight hag."
There was silence for a moment. Then Andrew straightened and peered up at me, his solemn face splitting into a wide grin. "Oh no, not a Scottish witch," he said. "A Viking witch."
Copyright © 2001 by Margot Wadley.