A mirror for witches

by Esther Forbes

The young man’s bodily fatigue was great, and his soul tormented. It grieved him to think that when at last he had gotten Doll Bilby by herself (and that upon a May night) it had profited him nothing. That night he could not sleep, but lay hot and lustful upon his bed. When he believed day about to dawn, he got himself into breeches, jerkin, hose, and shoes, and, having drunk a jorgen of ale, he went again to the search of Ahab.

Because there might be danger in the forest, he took with him his bastard musket. He came out of the house. It was not yet day. There was some light from the east, but it was a specious and unreal light, and the mists and fog from up over the sea were heavy and blue. He misliked the day.

First he looked about his own cow-pens and then about the cow-pens of his neighbour, for he knew the creature loved the company of his own kind and if alive would be like to return to them. There was neither bull, nor sign of bull. With his musket upon his shoulder, he took a path through Mr. Bilby’s meadows and came down to the smooth waters of the River Inch. He thought, ‘This Ahab is a greedy drinker. As soon as the sun is up he will get to the river and gorge himself with water.’ The fogs lay heaviest over the river, and they lay flat and white like piled counterpanes. Steadily the watery light grew from the east. He thought he would sit upon a boulder under a willow tree. The sun would soon shine out and drink up the fogs and dews of night. He kept his bastard musket on his knees, partly because the strangeness of the twilight vexed him, and partly because he knew that not far from him—no farther than he could shoot with his gun—was a path from out of the woods down which wild animals often came early to drink from the river. It was down this path he hoped to see Ahab, and in the meantime he might get venison for his mother’s larder. He sat quietly, and a doe stepped out, followed by twin fawns. But these he would not shoot, for their grace and smallness reminded him of Doll. Everything reminded him of Doll—the birds that sang, the flowers in the grasses, even the mystery and silence of the dawn. Yet these things should not have reminded him of a woman, but of her Maker.

In time he heard a crashing and breaking of twigs, and laughed to himself that he had read the bull’s thoughts so well, for nothing that lived in the forest would make such a commotion; only a domestic barnyard animal would carry himself so noisily. Nor was he disappointed, for out of the fogs and through the brush came the young bull, looking vast and large in the unreal light of dawn. He thought to let the creature settle himself to his drinking and then to steal up from behind him and catch his halter. So he sat quietly until he saw with astonishment that what he believed to be an Indian was astride him, and, having rigged reins to the halter, was endeavouring to turn him from the water.

To see a rider on Ahab did not surprise him, for he knew the bull had often carried even his little sisters, the puny Labour and Sorrow. It did astonish and anger him to see a savage in possession of his father’s property. So he called out roughly and forbade the man to turn the creature away from him. What next happened he never truly knew, for he was sure that the tawny (which at the instant seemed a large and ferocious brave) jumped from the bull’s back and made at him with his tomahawk. Titus knelt upon one knee and fired. In spite of the fogs and bushes that partly confused his sight, he took his aim most accurately against a bit of beadwork above the heart of his enemy. Now he saw this boy or man most clearly, the deerskin fringe to his jerkin, the feathers, the dark, angry face, the tomahawk, the patterns made by beads, and he knew that his aim was accurate and good; yet, even as the bullet sped to its mark, the Indian was there no more, and instead stood Doll Bilby with her hands clasped to her heart.

He knew the bullet went through her. When he first saw her, she was still staggering from the impact, but, when he reached her side and pulled away her hands (crying out and lamenting that he had killed her), there was no mark of blood upon her grey gown, and she assured him in a weak and frightened voice that she was unhurt. This gown Doll had on that day was made of strong fustian, and, as Mrs. Hannah always said, it had not a hole nor tear in it. Yet the next time Doll wore it there was discovered above the heart a minute and perfect patch, put on, evidently, to cover a hole no larger than a sixpence.

So great and so unreasonable was Titus’s love for Doll, he at first hardly considered the awful metamorphosis he had witnessed. Instead he was sick to think how close she had been to death.

As this story (which has just been set down in its true form) spread through the village, it grew incredibly larger in the mouths of certain people, and yet in the mouths of others it dwindled down into nothing. For the former of these insisted that Doll did not come alone, but was escorted by a vast troop of infernals, witches, etc., and that Ahab spoke to his master, making sundry infantile observations, such as might occur to the intelligence of a beast. Those who would make nothing of the story (and among these was Mr. Zelley) said Titus was no solid rock upon which to build the truth, and that his fancy had ridden him. There never had been an Indian upon the bull’s back, only Doll. He never had seen the beads, fringes, tomahawk. When he shot, his aim was confused and he had gone wide the mark.

Mr. Zelley, in his diary, quotes Scripture in regard to this curious incident, saying in part that Our Lord warns us against the putting of new wine into old bottles, lest the new wine prove too strong and burst the bottles. ‘So a torrent of feeling—especially when arising from the passions—is of the greatest danger to a weak container, and young Mr. Thumb is that weak container.’

At that moment, however, Titus had but one thought, and that was that at last the wench was in his arms, for she was so weakened by fear (or perhaps from the actual shock of the bullet) she could hardly stand. He comforted her, stroking her hair, kissing her, and saying over and over that he would have died rather than hurt a hair of her head. Concerning the fact that, but a second before, she had been in other shape and enjoying a different gender, he said nothing, for he thought that she might wish to remain mute concerning the matter, and then he thought: ‘It was because of kindness, at least if not towards me, towards the bull, that made this modest young female assume another shape. How could she, as a white girl, have ventured to the forest and found Ahab?’ So he said nothing. Now that at last his arms were about her, he felt none of the fire and anguish he had endured the night before; rather, it seemed to him, that he was caressing and comforting one of his own sisters. So he set her sideways on the bull, and took her to her own house.