A Witch In Winter (9 page)

‘Probably, but it’ll be covered by insurance. It’s mainly the risk to you I’m angry about. The stack went right through your bedroom roof. If you’d been upstairs you’d almost certainly have been killed! As it was it’s a miracle there’s no skull fracture. You’ve got a lot to thank Seth for, you know. If he hadn’t dragged you clear and called the paramedics when he did, things could have been a lot worse.’

‘Has he gone?’ I wasn’t sure what answer I was hoping for.

‘Yes, he stayed with you until I turned up and then left. But he must have been here a good five or six hours. I’ll have to speak to the school to make sure he doesn’t get into trouble for missing classes. He’s been a very good friend to you, Anna.’

‘I know,’ I whispered.

It was almost a relief when Dad was gone. I asked the nurses to pull the curtains around my cubicle and lay on my unhurt side, letting my tears leak into the pillow.

Seth didn’t deserve this. He deserved real love, not this unwilling, hypnotized, obsessive mockery – loving in spite of himself, loving against his true inclination. I might as well hold a gun to his head and force him to say the words, they would have had as much basis in reality.

I’d done protesting. I no longer believed it was coincidence. We
had
set something off with our meddling. No, that wasn’t right.
I
had set something off with my meddling. Although the others had been there, although they’d said the words too, it seemed pretty plain that, for some reason, only I’d caused harm. Harm to poor, unsuspecting Seth. And now more harm with the collapse of the chimney – although at least the only person to suffer this time was myself.

I thought of the book with a shudder, the charred pages full of destructive, pent-up power. And I thought, too, of that other witch. The one who’d put the book there. The one who’d been stoned, burned, drowned, and driven away from Winter like a pariah. What good had her spells done her?

But I couldn’t just leave matters as they were. I’d started this off, so I had to finish it somehow, I couldn’t abandon Seth to his sentence of false love. Who knew when it would wear off. A month? A year? A lifetime?

As my tears dried, I made myself a promise. I would try one last spell to release Seth. And if that didn’t work, I’d admit defeat. I’d burn the book and never meddle again. And somehow,
somehow
, I’d persuade Seth to leave me alone, even if that meant exercising a self-restraint I wasn’t sure I possessed.

CHAPTER SIX

‘A
nna.’ Dad put his head around the bedroom door. ‘How are you fee F="1emcauling?’

I groaned and put down my book. ‘For heaven’s sake, Dad. It’s been a week, nearly. Could we move on from the twice-hourly checks?’

‘Well it’s just I might need to go out for a bit – could you manage? I’ve hit a hitch with the bathroom and I need a new connector for the loo. It might take a while.’

‘People have been known to survive several hours without fresh-pressed juice and cold flannels, you know.’

‘Weeell … If you’re sure.’ He held me at arm’s length and gave me a searching look as though he could detect brain swelling just with the power of his bifocal glasses. ‘I feel a lot happier since we’ve had the phone line installed, I must admit. It really chilled me that Seth had to go to the main road to call 999 – you owe him your life, you know.’

‘I know, I know. I could’ve bled to death, blah-di-blah.’

I didn’t mean it to sound as petulant and teenagerish as it came out, but I was fed up of hearing for the millionth time how wonderful Seth had been and how much I owed him. Dad seemed to think I was being criminally ungrateful by refusing to return Seth’s calls. And by any normal standards I was, but Dad had no idea how hard it was for me to keep Seth at bay, and how much harder he was making it by rubbing my ingratitude in my face.

‘Well,’ Dad said, ‘I’ll take my mobile, but if you need anything urgently you can call this number.’ He passed me a post-it with a local number written on it, alongside the name
Elaine Waters
. I frowned.

‘Who’s this?’

‘Oh, lovely lady. I met her at the Crown and Anchor. She owns it actually. She’s offered to keep on standby in case there’s any emergency or you don’t feel well.’

‘She’s Seth’s mum, isn’t she?’

‘I believe so.’ Dad put up a feigned nonchalance.

‘For God’s sake, Dad, please don’t meddle!’

‘I’m not meddling!’ He looked offended. ‘Look, I met her well before all this business with the chimney. I do have a life while you’re at school you know. Anyway, I happened to ring her the other day, and she happened to volunteer to keep an eye out for you if I needed to go away.’

‘Dad …’ I said warningly. He put up a protesting hand.

‘Yes, I admit it, part of the reason I contacted her to was to ask her to thank Seth for everything. I do think you should have returned his calls, but hey, what do I know? I’m just your dad.’

‘Yes, you
don’t
know, so please butt out.’

< K he al/div>

‘I wasn’t butting
in
, young lady. I’m entitled to thank him on my own account. He probably saved the life of my only child and, strange as it may seem, I
am
rather grateful for that fact.’

I said nothing, but only clenched my teeth. Dad sighed.

‘Sometimes I think that chimney really did knock some of the sense out of your head. I’m sure you were never this difficult in London.’

‘Oh, Dad, come on! That’s not fair.’

Perhaps the hurt in my voice got through to him, even without knowing what was behind it, for his face softened and he patted my hand.

‘Sorry, I know it’s not really. And I know I shouldn’t interfere in your life; you’re old enough to make your own decisions. Whatever’s going on with you and Seth, I promise I won’t interfere. But I
do
like Elaine on her own account, so please be polite if she phones.’

‘I’ll be polite,’ I promised. ‘But nothing will come up, so please, just go, have a nice time, don’t worry.’

‘And
you
, take it easy and don’t hesitate to ring if you need to, remember?’

An hour later I was standing by the living room window waving to Dad’s car as it bumped down the rutted track to the main road, and out of sight.

He was gone. I was alone in the silent, watchful house. I’d been waiting for this moment for nearly a week – it was time to throw in my hand, sort this out once and for all.

As soon as I was sure Dad wasn’t coming back, I took the book out from under my bed. I couldn’t repress a shudder as I handled the heavy, crumbling mass of paper. It repelled me; the thick, curling pages like leathery skin, the crabbed scratchy writing, the lists of cruel necessities. As I leafed through the pages they sprang out at me; the tongue of a kitten, a child’s tears, three hairs from an adulterous woman, blood from a virgin girl.

‘To Brake of the Strongest Magick,’ I read under my breath, ‘a Darke Spell, onely to be Ufed in Great Need.’

Was this a case of great need? Nothing else had worked and I couldn’t condemn poor Seth to a lifetime of enchantment. The page was burned almost to ashes and in places the writing stood out silver against the blackened parchment. There were other marks: strange symbols in a witches’ alphabet, and dark, rust-red blotches. I tried not to think about what they were. At the bottom of the page I made out a faint note in a different hand:
oh sisters Beware
.

I shuddered, then pulled myself together. I could do this. I could do this for Seth.

‘Come on, Anna,’ I whispered aloud, and felt a litt Kd fit was tle courage return. But even so, the first line chilled me:
Take of the Bloode of a Witch
.

Well, there was no witch to hand, so I’d have to use the only blood available. Mine.

In the kitchen I took the sharpest knife I could find, shut my eyes and, steeling myself, I scraped my thumb down the blade. The rough metal bit into my flesh and when I opened my eyes a deep cut welled gore on to the kitchen table. It hurt, but I didn’t have time to think about that. Instead I grabbed a teacup and caught as much blood as I could before the wound clotted. Then, binding a tea-towel tightly around my thumb, I went back to the living room and read on.

Mix her bloode with earth & ashes & eat thereof. While Þe mouth still is thick with gore, speak the incantation
.

Well, I had earth and I had ashes. I padded outside, ignoring the stones cutting into my bare feet and the heavy drops that were beginning to fall from the lowering sky. Purple clouds were racing in from the sea to join the ones already gathered on the mainland, and far off in the bay, white horses were whipping up. I shivered as the wind picked up, piercing my thin pyjama top, and quickly scooped up some earth from the path. Then I hurried inside, shutting the door against the wind and rain. On some superstitious instinct I shot the bolt as well.

There was plenty of soft white wood ash in all the grates in the house, so I took a handful from the study fireplace and added it to the mix. Then I went back to the living room hearth and stared down at the book.

Mix … & eat thereof
.

I shuddered and stirred the cup with my finger. It squelched and ground and gritted, and a butcher’s smell came up. Nausea rose in my throat and the cut on my hand throbbed painfully, but I’d come this far, I might as well get it over. I put it to my lips and took a mouthful.

It was indescribably disgusting; a thick mixture like wet clay; a foul, clotted mass of grit and gore. My stomach heaved, trying to spit it out – but I fought down the wave of revulsion and managed to swallow a little and keep it down. I was pretty sure that ‘eat thereof ’ did not mean ‘put in your mouth and sick right up again’.

While my mouth was still clotted, I spoke the words of the incantation.

‘Hwat!’ My tongue was clagged with grit, my throat closing and heaving against the trickling ooze.

‘Hwat, storm-geboren.’

The taste was vile in my mouth.

‘Hwat, loathéd lyftfloga.’

I choked, but forced myself on.

‘Hwat, sceadu, Brimwolf.

Hwat, windræs.

Hwat, o Brimwolf.’

Nausea rose again, threatening to overwhelm me, and I gritted my teeth, drawing shuddering breaths in and out through my nose, trying to keep it together.

‘Hwat, o Brimwolf!

Come!’

When I finished there was silence. I waited for a moment, fighting the urge to crouch and wrap my arms protectively around myself – but nothing happened.

I closed the book with a sigh. Probably I’d missed some vital step, or you needed the blood of a real witch. Probably I’d pronounced the incantations wrong. Let’s face it – it was most likely all rubbish anyway.

Feeling flat and depressed, I washed out my mouth at the kitchen sink, then went up to my room to lie down. I put the spell book on the window sill. I’d return it to its hiding place later, I thought wearily, but right now I was more drained than I’d have thought possible. The wind shrieked and howled in the chimney as I climbed into bed, but I didn’t care. My head hit the pillow, and I slipped into the cool abyss of sleep.

I awoke with a jump, to the sound of a crash in the meadow outside. Somewhere a gate had blown loose and banged with a ceaseless, monotonous rhythm. The wind was mounting, and there was something in its voice that made me shiver and huddle deeper into my duvet. It was a strange howling, a shrill booming roar. At last I gave up trying to ignore it and went to the window.

The forest stretched out, dark and lush, and beyond that the restless waters of the bay. Far out, over the water, a shadow was racing over the sea, darkening everything in its path. It looked like a great dark stormcloud, but I’d never seen a cloud move so fast. The shrieking grew louder, and the shadow spread and darkened until the whole bay was almost as dark as night, only the pathetic glint of the lighthouse piercing the murk. There was a terrible crash far away, like a rock fall into the bay, and a tearing, rending sound. I shivered, thinking of all the fishermen out in their boats in this dreadful weather.

The wind grew louder still, and its note had a wailing, keening sound, like children crying, or seagulls mewing, though there wasn’t a single bird to be seen in the sky. Even the rooks had fled the great beech tree and the branches were clean and bare, for the first time since I’d come to Wicker House.

The dark cloud was coming closer and closer. First the forest was covered in its shadow, then the meadow, and now the windows of the house were darkening. I backed away, an inexplicable panic rising in me. I heard my own voice, thin and weak against the shrieking din, repeating, ‘It’s just a storm, it’s just a storm, it’s just a storm.’ But finally I couldn’t even hear my own voice, only the cacophonous wind, screaming at me:
Anna, Anna, Anna!

A face – a face at the window, a Kthed lush, a terrifying, shapeless face that eddied and surged with the gale. An open, screaming mouth full of swirling storm-tossed debris, and sightless, empty eyes filled with leaves, dust and the feathers of birds.
Anna!
screamed the mouth. The voice was dreadful, it was all the voices of my nightmares rolled into one, it was shrill and deep and it entered my wounded skull, throbbing inside my head.