Michael Swanwick's Periodic Table of Science Fiction

116

Uuh

Ununhexium

(?)

Spanish Witches

Hexium lexium,

sic semper sexium.

Civili Evili,

homicidium Rexium!

Okay, so they're not scholars. But, dog-Latin notwithstanding, those

Spanish witches are nobody to trifle with. They can dry up a cow with a

glare and wither a field with a snort. Three days of aberrant sex coupled

with rhymes that would make Cicero wince can slam the stock market

downward five hundred points. So when a spite-driven spell to kill the

king failed to give him so much as a case of the sniffles, they knew

immediately that they'd been unhexed.

"Who would dare?" they cried. "Who would dare?"

"My master, the English wizard Pouffe," said a monkey, climbing through

the kitchen window. He politely doffed his little red hat. "By the rules

of the Code Duello, he challenges thee to a test of powers in the

graveyard at midnight tonight."

"Midnight? With my arthritis?" cried the oldest of the lot, and, "I have

a date!" cried the youngest, and, "Get that filthy beast off my

countertop!" cried a third. But when necessity calls, all must answer,

and so that night all thirteen trudged to the graveyard to confront the

English wizard.

Pouffe was a plump little man with a silly hat. He offered the ladies

first at-bat.

With no great enthusiasm, the witches threw a hex at him. It was a weak

thing, little better than a schoolyard taunt. They were curious to see

what sort of chops he had.

"You trifle with me," Pouffe said scornfully. He plunged his wizard's

staff into a goblet of blood and then drank the blood. He sprinkled a

circle of linnet seed on the ground about himself while chanting runes

from the Book of Silence. Finally, he crucified a cat. When it died, a

hot wind of sorcery swept through the graveyard, undoing the witches'

feeble hex and simultaneously draining them of all their power. "You've

been unhexed," said Pouffe smugly. "Let's see you undo that!"

The witches went into a huddle. Finally, the oldest said, "That

crucifixion thing?d'you mind if we borrow the notion from you?"

"Be my guest."

The witches took off their clothes and waggled behinds of greatly varying

degrees of comeliness in the wizard's direction. Then they came at him in

a rush. They knocked away his sorcerous tools, tore his wizard's robe

from his body, and knocked his silly hat aside.

Then they crucified him.

"Wait! Stop!" Pouffe cried. "This is a violation of the Code Duello!"

"Oh, women don't fight by codes," the witches assured him. "We fights to

win."

It took a while for Pouffe to die, but just at the first light of false

dawn, a cold wind came rushing into the graveyard, restoring to the

witches all the power that had been taken away from them. Then they went

home.

It was not, perhaps, the most elegant ununhexing in the world. But it

worked. And that's all the witches cared about.

The End