"Witch's Promise"

Delaware River– 1984

Whip plunked down near the exact middle of the bridge, legs dangling off the skinny walkway. She snared her arms over the rusty struts lining the bridge, her head bowed forward. Her eyes absently scanned a large island upstream that had its own lake smack in the middle of it. Something about that amused her; it reminded her of those funny Russian dolls you'd stack inside each other. Layer after countless layer you could stack. But of course no matter how many dolls there were- no matter how many layers you fit into them— they were all ultimately the same, right down to the core.

Hollow.

The walkway rattled a bit as Penance's bare feet crossed it. He stood off to one side behind the girl.

"I don't know what it is I'm sorry for," he grumbled, like a little boy forced to apologize for breaking a window with his baseball, "but I am sorry."

"You havin' to say that," Whip answered, "just means you really don't get it."

"I said the truth. Maybe it's only what I think is the truth, but then I'm pretty sure I'm right, Whip—"

She glared up at the boy with her cinnamon eyes.

"Not all of it," she whispered. "You said that I'm in trouble now 'cause this 'Black Hat' fucker knows that we're friends."

Penance nodded.

Whip held up a finger and wagged it at him accusingly.

"Well I'm in trouble for nothin', then, because you and I are not friends!"

"Whip—"

"We're not. We're two people who've needed each other to get out of jams. That's it. 'Acquaintances'. That's what a snooty, proper talker would call it. That's what we are. That's all we are. No substance to speak of underneath all that: it's as hollow as a hole." She returned her gaze to the Delaware River, bunching her legs up Indian-style. "Friends talk— trust each other— and the truth is I don't know a thing about you."

"I've told you plenty—"

"You've told me about things, you haven't told me about you—"

Penance looked off to one side, teeth on edge.

"I didn't even know about this psycho killer until I saw him tie you to a boulder and throw you off a bridge." The girl stared down at her fee and let out a bitter scoff. "Christ, I don't even know your real name, white bread..."

Penance looked out over the river for a time, then he slowly slipped down under the metal struts and sat beside Whip, leaving a few diplomatic feet between them. He didn't look at her.

"Maybe..." Whip sighed. "Maybe I'm sorry, too. Maybe none of my bitchin' is important right now; we got bigger fish to fry. And to do that, well, maybe we don't have to be—"

"I was murdered in a town called Logroño, in 1611," the boy whispered.

Whip blinked, looking over at him.

"There was a tribunal there looking into accusations of witchcraft." Penance looked over at Whip. "Ever hear of the Inquisition?"

"The Spanish Inquisition?"

He shook his head.

"Canadian."

Whip scowled.

"Don't be shitty," she mumbled.

"My father was an attorney. A layman. He wasn't a member of the clergy but he had important connections in the church. Whenever the Inquisition accused someone of witchcraft, then found them guilty, their property was forfeit; that's where my father came into play.

"He worked with a clergyman— what they called a 'calificador'. The two of them were partners for a very long time. Whenever there was a big inquest somewhere they were often called into service; the calificador would determine the guilt of witches by spiritual law, and my father would take their property by mortal law."

Whip scoffed, shaking her head.

"So the church gets to decide who's guilty, and then also gets to take all their stuff? Now there's a genuine racket if I ever heard one."

"It was more corrupt than you might think." Penance let his legs dangle. He stared down at his bare toes, wiggling them about. "My father and the calificador had their own side business. Not all the stuff from the guilty parties ended up making it to the church, you see..."

"Your dad was skimming, you mean?"

Penance nodded.

"He was..." Penance cocked his head, swallowing a lump. "He was a very good attorney. Especially where handling property was concerned. He could play with ledgers and books and make it look like the church was getting more than they anticipated, when really he'd shuffled certain funds elsewhere, into the calificador's hands."

"And your family's?"

Penance's brow furrowed. The boy looked away. The tendons in his hands strained as he held the sides of the walkway with an iron grip.

"Sorry," Whip mumbled.

The boy shook his head.

"Nothing to be sorry about. And anyway you're right: he was a thief." A smile suddenly formed on Penance's face; he chuckled. "You know it wasn't until hundreds of years later, sitting in school, going over a history lesson, that I even got to understand how wrong the inquisition itself was. Just the whole thing. Took me a little less time to piece together what my father had been doing, but back then I thought he had at least been working at something useful. History's taken that illusion away from me. But then it's taken almost everything else away from me, too, so..."

"How'd you find out what your dad was up to?" Whip asked. "The skimming, I mean."

"He'd been called up to a northern town called Logroño; there were lots of accusations, and lots of unrest going on. Everyone was calling their own brother a spell-caster at the time. It would be a hell of a payday for both my father and the calificador, and my father figured he'd be staying there for so long that he purchased a house and had my mother, older sister, and myself join him. My two eldest brothers were somewhere else—one was in the navy, stationed in Cádiz, I think. I don't know about the other one."

Penance relaxed his grip on the walkway and massaged the feeling back into his sore hands, never looking up from the water below.

"I remember, when I was very little, that I once pocketed a cheap pewter tchotchke from someone's house, and when my father found out he made me march back with him to that house, give it back, and apologize. I was bawling all the while— you know how little kids are— but he wasn't having it. In fact, he actually got down on one knee and looked me eye-to-eye, telling me that he's raising me to be better than a thief." Penance laughed. "Y'know, I think that's the only time he ever did get down and look me eye-to-eye like that. The only time he was down on my 'level'..."

The boy shook his head, his hands against clasping the metal edge of the walkway like vice grips.

"The calificador came to our home one night for dinner, and it was tense. My sister and I were sent upstairs, but we could hear the shouts. Apparently my father had been getting cold feet about their arrangement for some time and was ready to end it. Staying in Logroño for so long and actually seeing the damage they were doing to people, instead of just quickly passing through like they regularly did, hit his conscience pretty hard, I guess. He was ready to stop working for the church and stick to the more 'legitimate' side of the law. Well, the calificador didn't take kindly to that, and he threatened my father's soul with eternal damnation if he refused to continue their 'righteous' work. That's when my father threatened to expose their scheme if the calificador raised a fuss."

Penance slowly looked up at the horizon, and then turned his head towards Whip.

"The calificador... he didn't like that."

He said nothing else, and for a time the only sound between them was the droning thud of cars moving above their heads.

When it started to get really uncomfortable Whip finally broke the pause.

"So... did—"

"It went to blows, and then they had a full-on fight. My father lost, and the calificador caved his skull in with a wine bucket. I remember creeping down the stairs, trembling from all the noise, and just seeing him lying there... and all that blood." Penance scoffed, again smirking. "I... uh, wasn't used to seeing blood like that, back then. And then my mother, screaming hysterically, frozen in place... just waiting there, standing like a deer in headlights, while the calificador picked up a dinner knife..."

Penance closed his eyes tight— not so much from pain, Whip thought, but exertion. He almost looked constipated. When he relaxed he laughed.

"Still... after all this time I just can't see it..."

"See what?"

"Their faces," Penance shrugged. "I can't remember. They're not there, in my mind. It's like blank slabs of skin. It's so damn funny, not remembering something like that. Not even my mother, you know? My own mother. I mean... it doesn't matter, either. It's not a big deal, but you'd just think... I dunno..."

He looked away from Whip and failed to discreetly wipe his eyes.

"When the calificador finished with her I was still there on the stairs, in shock. My sister was the only one of us with a brain in her head and she dragged me to the door, pushing me out into the night as the calificador grabbed hold of one of her braids and, well, I heard the screams and everything else while I went running, blind, in the night. It was a dead night— no moon for the thick clouds— and the house we were staying at was in an isolated area, not that I could see where I was going anyway. I stumbled into a churchyard far down the road, then went bouncing off tombstones like a pinball, all cold sweat and shock, and that's when he tackled me.

"He rolled me over, holding my head down with one hand. Just enough moonlight came through the sky for me to see him. He must've seen my eyes, too: all that panic and the fear. All he did was look at me. He looked at me for so long."

Penance squinted, tilting his head.

"I really do wonder how long it was. A few seconds? A minute? Ten?" He shook his head. "I really have no idea; time seemed to stop, then, me staring up at him, and that knife in his hand, dripping blood. Eventually he eased up the pressure on my head, then he used his thumb to make a little sign of the cross on my forehead. He whispered to me. He said..."

Again Penance swallowed hard, his nose wrinkling as he stared down at his feet.

"He said 'by penance, my child, find His embrace'..."

Whip tilted her head.

"I don't remember it hurting," he whispered, again shaking his head. "Not at all, in fact. The cut was quick, right through the neck arteries and the windpipe. No, there was really no 'hurting'. It was more… 'uncomfortable'."

He craned his head up, looking as far up at the sky as he could from their perch under the dirty bridge.

"I remember the darkness crowding my eyes, covering up that peeking moon. And the next thing I remember is seeing fire in the sky: the harsh light of dawn..."

Penance got up and took a few steps down the walkway.

"I wandered away, scared and confused. The 'scared' part I got over, in time. Had to, anyway. The 'confused' part took about 40 years to clear up, when I met Uallas." Penance smirked. "The calificador blamed my family's death on the 'witches' of Logroño. My bloodstain in the churchyard, and my missing body? The locals decided that pagans must've used my remains in some perverted dark ritual. It's kind of a local legend now, and the church is actually still there. I've got my own memorial candle in there to this day." Again the boy laughed. "I've seen it. It's... it's very nice..."

Whip slowly got to her feet and approached the boy, merely staring at his bare back for a moment.

"You know something?" Penance turned to face her. "I've never told that story before. Not to anyone. Not to Uallas, not to any of the people I've known in any of my 'lives'."

Whip didn't know how to take this, so she picked a generic response.

It seemed appropriate enough, anyway.

"Thank you."

"Even telling you that, though, that's not who I am. It's something I was: a snot-nosed son of a thief. An idiot kid who one day asked God to let him live his sheltered, naïve, stupid childhood forever, 'cause he was such a spoiled little snowflake that he didn't want anything to change, ever."

The boy thumped his chest with a hard fist.

"Let it never be said He doesn't have a sense of humor, right?"

Whip again thought about challenging the kid's rhetoric, but she realized she really didn't want to fight with him again. Not right now, at least.

"Black Hat... was he the collie-fickle-door?"

Penance twisted his lips.

"What? No. The calificador died at the ripe ol' age of 83; slipped and broke his neck on a marble floor. He was a bishop, by then. They've actually got a small statue of him in Zaragoza, if you can believe it."

"There's justice for you." Whip grumbled. "Been back to take a whizz on it?" She smirked.

"No, not really." Penance's eyes got distant for a moment, as if he were looking past Whip. "I've been back there a few times, though. Looking at his statute I feel..." he shook his head. "I don't know what I feel. 'Nothing', I think."

"Nothing? Really?"

He shrugged.

"Maybe I stopped being angry when I stopped remembering my parents' faces. I don't know. I don't like to think about it at all."

"Why tell me, then?" The girl crossed her arms.

Penance faced away from Whip, staring down the walkway at the Philadelphia side of the bridge.

"I guess I've never had a very good chance to share it with anyone. Not anyone I ever felt like sharing, at least."

"I gotta figure it must be difficult for you, not being able to... I guess 'relate' to anyone. Especially with things like that. The only people who'd understand where you're coming from are the same people that are tryin' to lop off your head." The girl tilted her head. "You ever... uh, come across any immortals your own age? Guess you kid-immortals are a rare bunch, huh?"

"Yeah," Penance mumbled. He looked back at the girl. "There was one, a few years back—"

"When you say 'a few years'..."

"The 40s. Over in Wisconsin. I was going to an elementary school outside of Green Bay and I ran into a girl named Clara. She was my age. You know," he motioned up and down his body. "About 200 years older, otherwise. She's one of the only other immortal kids I've ever seen. She said I was for her, too. We both agreed to a little truce, to try to run out the school year, at least. She was nice enough, and I enjoyed talking to her. Then, well..."

"'Well' what?"

Penance shrugged.

"It didn't work out."

When he didn't elaborate Whip tried to pry.

"I mean, what ended up—"

The boy looked over his shoulder at her; the look was wholly unpleasant.

To the point of being downright 'demonic'.

"It didn't... work... out..."

The boy's voice echoed throughout the metal underside of the bridge. Whip stepped back, and then she decided she'd be rather content to drop the subject.

"That priest— the Californianator— he sounded like he was a wicked man."

"You think?" Penance sarcastically tilted his head.

"No offense, but what your father did all those years was plenty wicked, too—"

"I told you there's no offense taken. And of course it was wicked; he was a thief, and a liar—"

"He died," Whip said. "And so did the priest, right?"

"Of course they did. What do you—"

"Mmm-mmm." Whip held up a finger, then she crossed her arms. "You don't get it: they died. If you're right, and it's being 'wicked' that makes an immortal, how'd they both get passed up?"

Penance opened his mouth, but then slowly closed it. His face flushed and he turned around, crossing his own arms.

"Not everyone who is wicked becomes an immortal, obviously," he grumbled.

"Mmm. Or you turn that phrase around—"

"You really wanna know why I think I told you all that? 'Cause I think I might know why." Penance leaned against the struts, making his body dangle precariously over the edge of the walkway. "I think all of us have something in us that makes us wanna tell our stories. I think there gets to be this kind of panic in you, when you start to think that your story might come to an end and no one out there has any memories of it. Nothing to remember you by." Penance spat down into the river, watching his loogie slowly fall through the air. "I've never wanted anyone to remember me from any of my past lives. I didn't want them to feel any pain when I had to leave." He looked over at the girl, drawing a slow breath. "Somehow, for some reason, I kinda want you to remember me, Whip. A little at least, maybe."

Whip, casually leaning against a support beam, suddenly felt her cheeks flush. She looked away, eyes wide, and then coughed uncomfortably.

"You ain't the kind of person a body forgets, white bread. Not by a long shot. I can promise you that." She then blinked as she mulled his words, looking back up at him. "What do you mean about your story 'ending', though?"

"I've done a lot of terrible things in my time," Penance said. "And Black Hat's always been there to make even the good things go sour." Penance looked up at the girl, his face again bearing a certain demonic quality.

"I've made awful choices in the past, and sometimes awful choices were made for me. Here, though, I've got one thing I can control."

"What's that?" Whip asked.

"I can save your life," Penance said, cocking his head down the Philly side of the bridge. "And that starts with me heading back into Philly, and you heading the other way, into Jersey."

Whip scowled.

"You gonna try killin' Black Hat?"

"I've got a plan," Penance said. "And if it works... well, he will die, at least."

The girl tromped up to him, hands on her hips.

"I'm in—"

"No, you're not—"

"You need me—"

"I need you out of the city."

Whip got even closer to the boy, towering over him and glaring down into his face.

"You barely bested Kenaz, kid, and even then only 'cause of me, right? Seems to me I'm your lucky rabbit's foot when it comes to immortal killin'."

Penance opened his mouth to retort but Whip shushed him with a finger to his lips.

"I'm going with you," she demanded. "And that's all there is to it."

He looked away from the girl, avoiding her towering gaze. With grit teeth he shrugged.

"I'll make a deal with you," he grumbled. "We can do this together, but that means you carry my backpack." He patted his bare shoulders. "Straps chafe my skin, you know?"

Whip slowly met the boy's calm smile. She nodded her agreement.

"Fair enough."

She turned around and moved back down the walkway toward his backpack sitting near the far end.

"Of course I did pull your ass out of a freezing-cold river, an' all, but who's countin' the heroics, huh?"

She made it five steps before he struck her: one powerful blow with his bare foot to the back of her left leg, right behind the knee. Her leg lost tension and gave way; she collapsed to the metal flooring, grunting in pain and surprise.

There wouldn't be much time for 'surprise', though.

Penance got on her back and then forced them both on their sides, his arm firmly cemented around Whip's neck. The girl thrashed about, straining to get his arm off her, but it was like tugging on the limb of a marble statue. The pressure on her neck tightened; her head swam and spots started forming in her eyes.

Her body soon grew numb and her face turned to one side, spit trickling from her slack mouth as she looked vacantly out across the Delaware. She could barely see that island again, the one with the giant lake in the middle.

Reminded her of those nesting dolls, again.

And by the time she lost consciousness she could say this much:

She did feel truly 'hollow'.