Free Enter Three Witches by Kate Gilmore Page A

for Mom instead of paying rent.”
    “What a marvelous name,” Erika said. “It sounds more romantic than ferocious. What did she do, spank you when your parents were out? We had a maid who did that—only once, I must admit.”
    “Nothing like that.” Bren felt suddenly comfortable with the subject of Louise, as if he could load all the peculiarities of his household onto her broad personality. “Louise is a voodoo woman. She casts spells and goes about muttering dark threats.”
    “That sounds delicious, but a funny choice for a nursemaid.”
    “Oh, Louise is harmless once you get used to her, and I’ve known her all my life. Besides, my mother is…” Bren found himself again at a loss for the right word.
    “Broad-minded?” Erika suggested.
    “That’s it. Broad-minded, and not easy to scare the way most mothers are. Eli’s mother used to have a fit when Louise took us to the park, but she couldn’t resist the temptation to get out of doing it herself. She’s a psychologist, and she thought Louise was going to give us all kinds of nightmares and complexes.”
    “And did she?”
    “Not that I’ve noticed,” Bren said cheerfully.
    They crossed the road that cut through the park below the Delacorte Theater and climbed the short hill. Now comes the hard part, Bren thought, as they settled into their seats in the rapidly filling outdoor auditorium.
    It turned out that there was no need for learned comments on the art of the dance. Erika was in her element. She gazed happily at the great, semicircular sweep of the stage and the tall lighting towers. “What a beautiful theater,” she said. “You’re so lucky to have grown up close to it.”
    Bren, whose visits to the Delacorte had been few, still managed to dredge up some memories from summers past. “I hope they’ll light the castle,” he said, pointing off into the dark. “The Central Park weather station is up there on the cliff across the lake in that imitation castle, so sometimes they light it up for a backdrop.”
    “Fabulous. I can’t wait.” Erika wriggled contentedly in her seat, and Bren wondered if she was getting cold. The temperature was certainly dropping as they waited for the ballet to begin, and the blanket still lay rolled in his lap—like a time bomb, he thought, casting a nervous glance at the girl beside him.
    Now, slowly, the bleak floodlights faded to darkness, and for a moment they could see a scatter of stars over the dim bulk of the castle. From somewhere a thin, wild melody began to grow—strange and elusive, as if from the void behind the stars.
    Then a bright passageway appeared between the trees, and down this corridor of light came three young men at furious speed. They were nearly naked, their bodies sashed with streamers of red cloth. Through the trees and onto the bare stage they came, running and whirling, savage, demonic, as the music rose. Bren felt the hair rise on the back of his neck and forgot to think about what he was seeing. There was no story, or if there was, it was one his bones and blood had known before he was born—one his ancestors had known in the firelight that pushed back the dark at the mouth of the cave.
    The music dropped, and he held his breath as the dancers stood arrested far upstage, their backs to the audience, their arms outstretched to the light among the trees. Now there was only the low throb of drums, a pulse of darkness almost below the threshold of hearing. Then, threading its way through the drumbeats, a melody of aching sweetness came, and with it a girl draped in the thin veils of spring. She advanced to the center of the enormous platform and captured its spaces with the movements of her body. To Bren’s mind came the thought of a spell—an intricate fabric of gesture and motion woven in the shimmering emptiness of the stage. If Erika said to herself, Perfection; every move is perfect, every tiny angle of wrist and toe, of neck and shoulder and knee, Bren thought, Magic.