Hammer of Witches
Authors: Shana Mlawski
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2013 by Shana Mlawski
Jacket art © 2013 by Andrew Mar
Map in back cover illustration based on Vinckeboons, Joan. Map of the islands of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. Map. ca. 1639. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, call number G3291.S12 coll .H3. 1 ms. map : col., paper backing ; 50 x 71 cm.,
http://www.loc.gov/item/2003623402
(accessed September 2012).
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
TU BOOKS, an imprint of LEE & LOW BOOKS Inc.
95 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Manufactured in the United States of America by Worzalla Publishing Company, April 2013
Book design by Isaac Stewart
Book production by The Kids at Our House
First Edition
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data from the print edition
Mlawski, Shana.
Hammer of witches / by Shana Mlawski. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: “Fourteen-year-old bookmaker’s apprentice Baltasar, pursued by a secret witch-hunting arm of the Inquisition, escapes by joining Columbus’ expedition and discovers magical secrets about his own past that his family had tried to keep hidden” — Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-60060-987-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-1-60060-988-6 (e-book)
[1. Magic—Fiction. 2. Wizards—Fiction. 3. Explorers—Fiction.
4. Storytelling—Fiction. 5. Columbus, Christopher—Fiction. 6. America— Discovery and exploration—Spanish—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M7123Ham 2013
[Fic]—dc23
2012048627
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To my parents,
who gave me life,
love,
and a lot of books
My uncle Diego always
said there was magic in a story. Of course, I never really believed him when he said it. My uncle was an old man to me for as long as I can remember, and a bookmaker, too, so his head was always full of one story or another. You could never be sure if he was telling some truth from his past or some legend he had heard along the way. Half the time he probably wasn’t sure himself.
Now I know my uncle was right. There
is
magic in a story. Real magic. Only when I was a little older and sitting on a shore at the edge of the world did I understand how right my uncle was.
He had almost convinced me one time before. Back then I was seven, an olive-skinned child with thick black hair and a big mouth that was learning to tell lies. We were back in Palos de la Frontera in Spain, in a candlelit closet they called my bedroom. It was summer. The night was sweaty and raw with the smell of tallow and burning wicks.
“Wait, Uncle,” I murmured as I peeked up at him through half-closed eyes. The old man bent in shadows in the doorway. A ball of warm light pulsed on the candle in his hand. “Don’t leave yet. You didn’t tell me a story.”
The ball of light bobbed on the candle as my uncle laughed, and his long shadow laughed across the wooden beams of my ceiling. “All right, Bali. All right.” Each syllable bounced across his tongue. Uncle Diego had always had the perfect voice for stories. He had grown up in Turkey, so his Castilian was stained with shades of his native Greek.
My uncle placed his candle on the floor and lowered himself onto the stool next to my bed. “And what kind of story does His Majesty want to hear tonight?”
“One about Amir al-Katib, of course!”
Of course! My poor uncle had spent the last seven years telling me stories of Amir al-Katib, the noble warrior who fought against his own Moorish people for the freedom of Christian Europe. Best of all, the stories were true. My uncle had known the man in the old times, in Constantinople.
“So His Majesty wants another story about Amir al-Katib. And which one does He want to hear this time?”
“One about the siege of the city. The one where he saved your life.”
“Didn’t I tell you that one last night, Baltasar?”
“Tell the one where he brought you and Father to Palos. No, tell me a new one. Tell me one I haven’t heard before.”
The old man yawned, picked up his candle from the floor, and stuck a hasty kiss on the top of my forehead. “I’m sorry, Bali. It’s late. I’ll come up with a good story for you tomorrow. I promise.”
And he turned to leave. But as he did, a shrill caw like a hawk’s or an eagle’s tore through my bedroom’s open window. The flame of my uncle’s candle seemed to shrink at the sound, and a ragged shadow like a bird of prey trembled across his wrinkled face.
“You know, Baltasar. There is another story about al-Katib, now that I think about it. But if I tell it, you must promise not to tell your aunt Serena. I mean it. There is magic in this story.”
And for some reason, that night, I almost believed him when he said it. “I won’t tell, Uncle. I promise.” So my uncle returned to his seat and began his story:
“Once in Arabia there were two men who killed another. The slain man was innocent, the deed done out of jealousy and spite. The man they had killed was their brother. The two men had coveted his wife.
“When the act was done the elder brother looked down at the slain man and said, ‘Leave him here on the road, where his blood will color the earth. Tomorrow when the sun rises the vultures will come and eat his flesh.’
“Now in Arabia, Baltasar, it is a dreadful sin to murder and a grave dishonor not to bury the dead. But the younger man heard violence in his brother’s voice, so he did not argue. The
brothers took a last look at their kinsman, wiped their daggers of his blood, and returned to their homes certain they were safe.
“But they were not safe. For that night, the blood of the slain man clawed toward the heavens, screaming for revenge. And its call was answered. That night a beast sprang from that crimson pool, howling the name of its ancient god. It was the beast known only as the hameh.”
Hameh. I shuddered as the word slithered up my chest. “What is it?” I said almost voicelessly.
“The hameh is a bird, Bali. Black as the sea on a moonless night. Its scream can drive a man to madness, and it leaves a bloody trail in its wake. And it never forgets its sacred charge. From that moment on the hameh pursued the two men until it delivered justice unto them.”
Somewhere in the distance I thought I heard another hideous shriek, and my fingers curled themselves around the edge of my quilt. Somewhere, I knew, a hellish black hawk was circling the skies, searching, waiting to rend me with its claws and judge me for my sins. Hameh. It sounded like a curse. Like a deadly spell. Like the last warm breath in the mouth of a dead man.
“Uncle,” I whispered, “you said you would tell me a true story. You said you would tell me about Amir al-Katib —”
“I did, Baltasar,” my uncle said, and I heard the sorrow in his answer. I couldn’t yet understand what he meant by that,
nor why he told me that story that night. I didn’t yet know that my destiny and the destiny of the hameh had been entangled for many years and would be so for many years to come. And although I suspected it, I didn’t yet know that every word my uncle had said was perfectly true.
“But maybe he’s right,” I remember thinking that night. “Maybe there is magic in a story. Dark magic. Magic that can steal your soul.”
Soon my uncle left and closed the door behind him, and I kissed the Lord’s Prayer into the wooden cross that hung around my neck. It wasn’t long before I fell asleep. And in my dream I thought I heard my aunt’s voice, muffled and distant. “You shouldn’t have told him, Diego. It’s better if he doesn’t know.”
And in my dream my uncle answered, “Do not worry, my love. It is just a story. Meaningless . . .”
