Elise Runs and Dorothy Falls

Chapter 7

"What is that dreadful stuff you're smoking, anyway?"

The next morning, after a nice bath in the bricken basement, Elise reached the ground floor again to find Dorothy at her table messing with a large rock, and, most obviously, chugging on her long pipe.

"Yellow powder coarser than not."

"Yes, I got the yellow part..." The yellow clouds billowed all around her. "Might we open the... door?"

"If you'd like."

When Elise returned, she sat across the table from the witch.

"May I ask you something?"

"You've been askin' questions this whole time."

Elise frowned. "What exactly is it you do with all these rocks? Why do people buy them from you?"

Dorothy looked up from beneath disbelieving brows. Her eyes rolled almost so far they disappeared.

Bristling (quite literally—her hair began to frizz), Elise almost discharged some magic lightning herself, but then the witch added,

"Let's put it this way. You know that bathtub down there, where you just enjoyed a hot bath?"

"Yes."

"One of me stones heats it. With me power I enchant all kinds of stones that help people with their needs: heatin', lightin'... for some of the fancier folk, even electricity."

"I thought generators... wind, water turbines... did that sort of thing."

Dorothy laughed spitefully. "Every zeppelin flyin' over Unum would crash this instant if a witch like me hadn't enchanted it in some way, usually with 'rocks'. We witches erect the world around you."

"It wasn't like that where I came from. There, we did everything ourselves. If we had witches, they were just like everybody else."

"Yeah. Well, it's not like that out here in the real world." Setting her pipe on the stove, Dorothy began to gear up for the day. She put on her rings; threw an empty sack across her shoulder.

"Dorothy, if you do so much here, why is it that... that you have to live in a place like this?"

The witch's eyes narrowed, and for the briefest moment Elise worried she might hurt her. Then the witch said quietly, "Because you fear me. You all do," and Elise understood. As the witch climbed toward daylight, the girl stood up from the table.

"Dorothy!"

Peering across her shoulder—bangs shadowing her eyes like trees before a forest fire—the witch peerred back down. Her handmade clothes, her patchwork stockings, and her young face had never looked quite so real as they did now, in relief against the old suns.

"May I come with you? Please?"

"...All right. But don't be trouble."

Elise nodded. She'd do her best. As for Dorothy, she had her doubts.

When they got up top (Germón included, who didn't wish to be left alone), the witch leaned inside and finalized a few snares at the entrance. After that, and with a resounding bang, she closed and locked the hatch behind them.

"I've never seen you set traps before."

"Guess I had this weird feelin' you'd try to escape. Don't know where I coulda imagined that bollocks."

Caught between a frown (at the language), and a smile (at the humor), Elise folded and refolded her arms. "If it makes you feel better, I won't try to escape again. It's not as if I really have someplace else to go."