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perhaps spirits who knew her or had touched somehow her long life, or were by some unknown
sympathy attracted to the stern, unseeing woman in white linen, who held the gate open and yet spoke to
no one.
For though the spell is called a summoning spell, its effect and its danger is that it brings the user very
close to that world which is not a world (being placeless and infinite), wherein a living mortal has no
business to wander.
And though there was no malice in the vague fingers that touched Saara, or in the soft whispers that
questioned her, there was also not one of them without the power to do Saara great harm (should she let
them), or to cause her great pain (whether she let them or not).
She took a deep, shuddering breath and her nostrils twitched, as though the air were too thick to
breathe. "Damiano!" she called again, this time with a touch of urgency.
There was a moments silence, and then came a small voice, a sweet child's piping voice, speaking the
language of her northern people. "Mama?" it cried wonderingly. "Is it Mama?"
She gave a despairing gasp. "Go to sleep, baby," she whispered into the blackness, while tears
escaped the confines of her closed eyes. "Go back to bed. I will come to you soon."
Now it was late and she had almost no strength left to hold the gate and fight the river of innocent,
deadly voices. She had a sudden, desperate idea.. "Little white dog," she called out. "Little white dog of
Damiano's. Spot, or whatever your name was& come to me."
"Macchiata," was the matter-of fact answer, which came from very close in front. Saara held to this
spirit and let the rest go. She opened her eyes.
Sitting before her, legs splayed, was a very pretty plump girl with hair that shone silver in the
moonlight. Her garb, also, was a simple white shift that gleamed without stain, with a red kerchief which
tied about the neck and spread out across her back, sailor fashion. She had little wings like those of a
pigeon.
She smiled at Saara with bright interest. Her eyes were brown.
"Some mistake," murmured the witch. "I summoned only a dog. A little white dog which belonged
to& "
"To Master Damiano. Yes, that's me." She started to scratch her spectral left ear with her spectral
left hand in short, choppy forward motions. She seemed to get great satisfaction out of doing this.
"Damiano likes me in this form."
"He does?" Saara exclaimed with somewhat affronted surprise. Then she remembered Damiano's
peculiar prejudice toward the human form above that of all animals, however splendid. "Well, I thought
the dog looked perfectly fine."
Macchiata was still for a moment, and then resumed scratching. She metamorphosed between one
stroke and the next, going from girl to dog, and continued her scratch quite contentedly with her hind leg.
"Like that?"
"Lovely," stated Saara.
The deep brown eyes regarded Saara, asking no questions. The white dog smiled with all her
formidable teeth exposed and her red tongue lolling to the right. Her fluffy pigeon wings scratched one
another's backs behind her.
Saara had not forgotten how last she had seen this animal, frozen like a starved deer in the snow, with
her dark master above her, equally frozen with grief. She said, "You died by my hand, dog. But it was
not by my intent."
Macchiata pulled her tongue in. Under the spell she had attained an almost lifelike solidity, but still she
glowed with milk-glass light. "I remember I think. You were upset."
"I was," admitted the greatest witch of the Italics. "Upset and afraid, and I struck thinking only of
defending myself. Do you forgive me, spirit?"
The dog, in reply, flopped over on her back. "Sure. Why not? Scratch under my left elbow; I can't
reach."
Saara obeyed and was surprised to feel warm fur beneath her hand. "Have you fleas, then?"
"No." As the human's hand rubbed in expanding circles, the dog's left foot began a spastic, regular
pawing of the air. Macchiata grunted like a pig. "No. No fleas in heaven. Only scratching."
Saara settled back on her heels and looked about her. The moon was descending the western sky;
the night was getting old. "Spirit, I haven't much time. Will you help me find your master? I called and he
could not hear me."
"He heard you," said Macchiata, flipping onto her legs. She gave a great shake. "Everyone heard you.
.You called very loud. He just wouldn't come."
Saara felt a cold needle of misery pierce through her. She was some time in answering. "He&
wouldn't come?"
"No." The dog's nostril's twitched, smelling the salt in Saara's tears. "Don't get upset! He stayed away
so you wouldn't get upset. He wanted to come."
Saara swallowed, beyond words for a moment. Finally she said, "I have to see him about Raphael. If
I can't help Raphael, I will be very upset."
Macchiata's sticklike tail thumped appreciatively. "I like Raphael. He has never been upset. Never."
"That could change," replied Saara ominously, "unless we help him."
"I'll get Master," announced the dog, and she faded like an afterimage on the eye.
Once Macchiata was gone, Saara wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her shirt and blew her nose into a
handful of birch leaves. She had been shaken by every pull on her living memory, and the spirit that had
refused to come had shaken her hardest. Had there been some malice in the little creature, to say so
brutally "He wouldn't come"? Indeed, the summoning spell was the most dangerous of all spells, to soul
and to body, for now that she had done it, she felt hardly the strength or the desire to go on living.
Her children: Could it be they were no more than infant spirits, grown neither in heart nor mind since
the day they bled to death with their father on the floor of the hut? Something in Saara, instinct or sense
of justice, rebelled at this idea. Was there illusion at the base of the summoning spell? Had Ruggerio not
really kissed her fingertips?
Had Guillermo Delstrego not come after thirty years of her hate to say to her, "God go with you"?
Something had happened nonetheless, and someone had come to her behind the darkness of her closed
eyes. It remained to be seen whether her task had succeeded or failed.
She stared at the disk of the descending moon, and so deep in thought was she that she did not notice
the silent approach of one behind her.
"Saara," he whispered. "Pikku Saara."
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