Chapter 4
Katrina woke up a few hours later. The comfortable fire she had made was now only a slight glow.
It was freezing cold. Katrina pulled her cape tighter and sighed. She could not stay in her old home. She had to listen to the voice of reason once in her life and find a hotel in the morning. Katrina had never been good at listening to reason. She had always been a person who trusted her emotions and her intuition. Her father had always found that very disturbing. The young woman smiled sadly at the memory of her dead father. They had had their fights, but she knew that he had only wanted her best. She remembered the day they moved out of the hut. Her father had been thrilled by the thought of finally being able to give both the women in his life everything they deserved in his eyes. But Katrina had never been a person who could be made truly happy with a fancy dress or an expensive piece of jewellery. It were the small things that reached her heart, the ones which showed the love of the giver. Like the little "bird" Ichabod gave her. She had loved it from the moment she first saw it and the day he proposed to her Ichabod had given it to her. He had tried to explain to her how the trick worked on their way to New York, but she had stopped him. Katrina preferred to continue believing it was magic, like she preferred to believe that not coincidence but her love had saved Ichabods life when the horseman had attacked him, but only damaged the spell book she had given him. Ichabod had told her that it had been his love for her that saved him, because he wanted to keep the gift of the woman he loved right above his heart. Katrina wondered, if Ichabod still had the book or if he had burned it right after she left.
Ichabod woke up early from a fitful sleep. He had not been able to find rest tonight, because his dreams were haunted by the woman he loved. Stop thinking that! You do not love her. It is just your hexed mind playing tricks on you. All you need is a distraction to keep your thoughts of her for the next six days. It will be the best if you start to work again. Yes, that will definitely help.
It did not take Ichabod long to realize had had been wrong. He was unfocused the whole day and his colleagues wondered what was wrong with the man, who had been considered a little weird, but definitely a genius. He did not snap at the Constables for moving things on a crime scene or demanded to do what he called an "autopsy". Constable Crane still worked with his strange liquids and instruments, but they caught him several times just staring into space instead of watching chemical reactions. One of the braver young men had asked their boss if he was alright, but Crane had only snapped at him and told him to attend to his affairs.
A few days after Ichabod had started working again he was sent to investigate the death of a young woman. He found the body lying on the bottom of the stairs. After a close inspection of the surrounding, Ichabod came to the conclusion that the woman was not a crime victim. She had simply stumbled on the old and rotten stairs.
When Ichabod left the house he paid little attention to the crowd of curious onlookers standing at the entrance until a middle-aged woman addressed him.
"I knew she would do it one day, everybody knew!" She said in a shrill tone.
"Who would do what Ma'am?" Ichabod asked in his usual matter-of-fact-tone.
"The old hag living next door to the poor thing. Everybody knew she would kill somebody someday!"
"I do not know which problems you may or may not have with said lady, but I can assure you that Mrs. Livingstons death was an accident."
"Lady!" The woman snorted. "She is a witch, everybody knows that!. She can make people have 'accidents' ".
A few months ago Ichabod would have assessed this statement as the weak accusation of a poorly educated superstitious woman, but after what he had seen in Sleepy Hollow and what Katrina had done to him he saw the statement in a different light.
"Do you have any valid evidence that the person we are talking about is in fact a ... witch?" Ichabod still did not feel comfortably using that term.
"Evidence? The hag plants many strange herbs in her garden and she only gathers them at midnight in full moon nights. I live across the street and in one night I saw her in the garden. She had lit a fire there and above it was a cauldron in which she put the fresh gathered herbs, murmuring strange words in a foreign language. I ask you: Would a woman who is not witch do such things?"
"Well... I do not know, but I should most definitely speak to said person. In which house does she live?"
The angry neighbor showed Ichabod the way and a minute later he found himself standing on the doorstep of the "witch house", knocking hesitantly.
The woman who opened the door looked like the incarnation of the fairy-tale witch. She was very old, had messy grey hair and was wearing mismatched clothes. The only missing thing to complete the picture was a raven or a black cat.
"Good morning, Ma'am, my name is Constable Ichabod Crane; I am here to investigate the death of Mary Livingston. My I come in for a moment?"
"I guess one of my nosy neighbors told you I killed that woman with my magical powers," she answered, coming straight to the point.
"Did you?" Ichabod replied, equally blunt while the woman let him to a dusty living room.
"No, I have nothing to do with her death, Constable Crane," she answered, sitting down in a ragged armchair. "Being a witch does not necessarily mean being dangerous."
"You are not denying that you are a witch then?" Ichabod asked surprised.
"Why should I? "
"Well, most people would, especially when being accused of murder."
"I have nothing to hide. I did not even know Mrs. Livingston, I do not have any benefits from her death and the times when witches were burned are over."
"Probably because barely anybody believes in witchcraft anymore," Ichabod reasoned.
"You do." It was not a question.
"I only believe in what I have seen and experienced myself and I have experienced the power of magic personally," he answered in a bitter tone.
"So you know a witch?" The old woman asked curiously.
"I thought I knew her." Ichabods voice did not sound bitter anymore, but broken.
"It is an affair of the heart then," the woman smiled.
"It is, in a way. She used a love spell on me. She made me fall madly in love with her, she made me marry her! And the worst thing is that even now, that I know the truth, the spell is not broken."
"You still love her?" She inquired.
"My vexed heart tells me that I love her," he answered bitterly.
"How much time has passed since you last saw your wife?"
"Two nights and one day."
"In this case you will know for sure if your feelings were only created by the charm tonight. Inflicting a love-spell on somebody who does not already have feelings for the witch using the spell is deep dark magic. People always assume that this kind of magic is the most powerful one, but that is not true. A dark magic ritual to create love loses its power when the victim of the spell has not seen the object of his affection for 48 hours. If your wife performed one of those rituals, you will be free of thoughts on her tonight. If she used a white magic ritual, it would not have worked if you did not have feelings for her in the first place. These rituals only serve to reveal suppressed feelings and to give the courage to act on them. If you still feel the same way about this woman tonight, you will know that your love for her is real."
Katrina took her suitcase and gave the hut she loved so much one final glance before she went to town to ask the coachman working for the new owners of the Van Tassel house to bring her to the next pension. The new owners politely invited her to stay for tea and she accepted. In the late afternoon she left with the coachman for the next slightly bigger town with a pension.
They were not far away anymore when Katrina suddenly heard the sound of a galloping horse approaching. She looked out of the window curiously and saw something she thought she would never see again. A few feet behind her and fast approaching was the horseman on his black horse.