The Brixen Witch Read Online Free PDF Page B

now here we are.”
    It was the voice Rudi had heard that night in the spring, when the trouble with rats had first begun. Now he saw that it belonged to Marco, the village blacksmith.
    Oma, who had been dozing on a bench, jerked awake at the words. She stood and addressed the blacksmith, who was more than twice her size.
    “Ah, Master Smith. Did you also predict that the sun would rise this morning?”
    After a few seconds looking around, the blacksmith’s gaze fell upon Oma, who stood more or less as high as his rib cage.
    “Good evening, Mistress Bauer. You have a bone to pick with me, do you?”
    She wagged a finger at him. “It seems you’ve spent these last weeks using all your energy in predicting and complaining. What about a remedy? Here we are, true enough. But what we need to know is this: What’s to be done about it?”
    “About the rats?” said Marco. “There’s nothing to be done, except wait for the winter to freeze them out. Or wait for a new sign. Whichever comes first.” And with that he spun away from Oma, as if their conversation had come to an end.
    But Oma seemed to think otherwise.
    “Sit and wait,” she said to his broad back. “I suppose you needn’t worry about rats chewing through your metalworks. But how will you feel when one of your beautiful fat twin babies is bitten?” Oma folded her arms and tapped her foot, and waited.
    Rudi, and all the villagers within earshot, held still and waited as well.
    Marco turned toward Oma once more. His face had gone pale. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
    “ Hmph !” said Oma. “That’s what I thought.” She turned away from Marco the blacksmith.
    And now the conversation had come to an end.
    Oma beckoned to another man in the crowd, a wiry bald man whose mustache was as wide as his face.
    “Did you hear all that, mayor?” she asked him.
    “Aye, mistress, I heard,” said the man. “What do you think?”
    “How should I know? You’re the mayor.”
    The mayor furrowed his brow and pulled at hismustache. “I think tomorrow night, then?”
    Oma nodded. “Tomorrow night.”
    And so the town meeting was called to order at sunset the following day.
    Rudi and his family arrived in time to hear the mayor’s gavel striking. The room was already full of people, and the debate was already under way.
    “My children have been afraid to go outdoors,” someone was saying. Rudi recognized the voice of Not-So-Old Mistress Gerta. “Even on the sunniest of days. Then one morning a rat fell out of the rafters, and so the children ran back outdoors. Now they play in the middle of the lane, where they can see whatever might be coming toward them. I fear that one day they’ll be struck by a cart.”
    “Seven sacks of flour,” announced Jacob the miller. “That’s how many have been gnawed upon and spoiled by rats. How many more before the summer is out? Soon enough no one will have bread to eat.”
    Even Rudi’s mother had something to say. “I keep a spotless cottage. I scrub the floors, beat the rugs, wash the linens. And yet there they are, as happy to be among us as in the barn under the manure. I don’t know what’s gotten into the creatures.”
    Several villagers responded with sympathetic murmurs and nods.
    “We need Herbert Wenzel,” crackled a thin voice beside Rudi. “Someone needs to go to Klausen and fetch him.”
    The voice was Oma’s. And though Rudi himself had barely heard the words, the entire room fell silent.
    “Herbert Wenzel?” said the mayor from the platform. “The rat catcher?” And then, meeting Oma’s steely gaze, he cleared his throat and banged his gavel. “Of course! The rat catcher. Because this is nothing more than an ordinary, disgusting infestation of rats. Who better to deal with it than an ordinary, disgust—er, a professional rat catcher?”
    Rudi glanced sidelong at Oma. The mayor was proposing exactly what she had suggested the day before: If ordinary measures got rid of the rats, then