Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber Page A

halfway across campus.
    No need to go back to the office, he told himself shakily. Just a long climb for a few notes. They could wait until tomorrow. And why not go home a different way tonight? Why always take the direct route that led through the gate between Estrey and Morton, under those dark, overhanging ledges. Why —
    He forced himself to look up again at the open window of his office. It was empty now, as he might have expected. That other thing must have been some moving blur in his vision, and imagination had done the rest, as when a small shadow scurrying across the floor becomes a spider.
    Or perhaps a shade flapping outward —
    But a shadow could hardly crawl along the ledge outside the windows. A blur could hardly move so slowly or retain such a definite form.
    And then the way the thing had waited, peering in, before it dropped down inside. Like… Like a — Of course it was all nonsense. And there really was no need whatsoever to bother about fetching those notes or closing the window. It would be giving in to a momentary fear. There was a rumble of distant thunder.
    — Like a very large lizard, the color and texture of stone.

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    “— and henceforth his soul is believed to be knit up in a manner with the stone. If it breaks, it is an evil omen for him; they say that thunder has struck the stone and that he who owns it will soon die —”
    No use. His eyes kept wandering over the mass of print. He laid the volume of The Golden Bough aside and leaned back. From somewhere to the east, the thunder still throbbed faintly. But the familiar leather of the easy-chair imparted a sense of security and detachment.
    Suppose, just as an intellectual exercise, he tried to analyze the misfortunes and fancies of the past three days in terms of sorcery.
    The cement dragon would be a clear case of sympathetic magic. Mrs. Gunnison animated it by means of her photographs — the old business of doing things to the image instead of the object, like sticking pins in a wax doll. Perhaps she had joined a number of photographs together to make a motion picture. Or perhaps she had managed to get a picture of the inside of his office and had clipped a picture of the dragon to it. Murmuring suitable incantations, of course. Or, more simply, she might have slipped a picture of the dragon into one of his pockets. He started to feel through them, then reminded himself that this was only arm intellectual exercise, a trifling diversion for a tired brain.
    But carry through on it. You’ve exhausted Mrs. Gunnison. How about Evelyn Sawtelle? Her recording of the bull-roarer, notable storm-summoner, would provide a neat magical explanation for the wind last night and the storm and wind today — both associated with the Sawtelles. And then the similar sound in his dream — he wrinkled his nose in distaste.
    He could hear Tansy calling Totem from the back porch, rattling his little tin pan.
    Put today’s self-injurious acts in another category. The obsidian knife. The razor blade. The cranky saucepan. The carpet tack. The match that he had let burn his fingers a few minutes ago.
    Perhaps the razor blade had been charmed, like the enchanted sword or ax which wounds the person who wields it. Perhaps someone had stolen the blood-smeared obsidian knife and dropped it in water, so the wound would keep flowing. That was a well-established superstition.
    A dog was trotting along the sidewalk out in front. He could distinctly hear the clop-clop of paws.
    Tansy was still calling Totem.
    Perhaps a sorcerer had commanded him to destroy himself by inches — or millimeters, considering the razor blade. That would explain all the self-injurious acts at one swoop. The flat voice in the dream had ordered him to do it.
    The dog had turned up the drive. His claws made a grating sound on the concrete.
    The tarot-card diagrams scribbled by Mrs. Sawtelle would figure as some magical control mechanism. The stick-figure of the man and the truck had grim