Backwards Moon (5 page)

“Follow you?” said Bracken faintly.

Toadflax nodded. “To my cottage. Only to my cottage. I have things to tell you. Things you need to know. Come,” she said. “Don't be afraid. I want only the best for you.”

Nettle and Bracken stared numbly.

“And the others too!” Toadflax added quickly. “Certainly, certainly the others too! Come, it's not far.”

Nettle looked at Bracken.

Bracken pulled her hat down low. “All right,” she said.

As they neared the cliff face, Toadflax muttered a spell and landed on the ledge. The outlines of her cottage appeared as if
through a drifting fog. There was no front porch, no swing—only a rocky path to a stout wooden door. Toadflax strode forward and waited in the gloom, holding her lantern high.

Nettle and Bracken stowed their broomsticks in their pockets, then followed Toadflax inside.

“Oh!” said Bracken, stopping. Rows and rows of spell books, human-made books, and books that Nettle didn't recognize as either sat on shelves carved deep into the rock.

“Pretty, aren't they?” said Toadflax. “Go ahead. Take a look.”

Bracken walked along the shelves, head bent, reading every spine.

“I see you've noticed the
Encyclopedia of Known Enchantments
,” said Toadflax, running a thin finger along the volumes. “It's too bad the others don't have one.” She smiled. “It would have been especially useful for Rose. She's the one who gives you your lessons, is she not? But so it goes.”

“The
Encyclopedia of Known Enchantments
,” said Bracken slowly. “You had one all this time and you didn't
tell
anybody?”

“Selfish!” said Nettle.

“Don't be impudent,” said Toadflax. She hung her lantern on the hook above the table. “Sit down,” she said, sinking to a seat. Her face was pale, her eyes shadowed by her hat's wide brim. “The time has come, and then some.”

Nettle and Bracken sat on the bench across from her.

“What they won't tell you about is the Fading,” said Toadflax.

“The Fading,” quavered Bracken. “What's . . . the Fading?”

“The Fading is when you lose your powers,” said Toadflax.

“Your
magic
powers?” said Nettle, aghast.

“How could you lose your
powers
?” asked Bracken.

“Humans drain them away,” said Toadflax.

“That's impossible. That could never happen!”

“You don't think so?” said Toadflax. “It's happened to many, many covens.” She paused. “It began in the days when we lived in the Old Country. In London.”

“In London,” echoed Bracken bleakly.

“Everyone thought it was a disease, from the stink and roar of the city,” said Toadflax. “The oldest ones succumbed first, and then the next oldest, then the next after that. The youngest ones seemed to hold out the longest.”

“And . . . they lost their
powers
?” Bracken seemed dazed.

“Yes,” hissed Toadflax. She leaned toward them. “
It happens whenever there are too many humans near!
That's why we left the Old Country and came to this one. It's why the Woodfolk came too. They thought they'd be safe.” She smiled wanly. “So much for that idea.”

“If you lost your powers, you couldn't
fly
!” cried Nettle. She swallowed. “You couldn't talk to animals! You'd have to lug everything around in some big, heavy bundle on your back. . . .”

“Exactly,” said Toadflax. “It is too horrible to contemplate.
But that is what will happen to you
when humans come to this valley. As they will, soon.” She stared at them with glittering eyes.

Bracken put her head in her hands. “This is awful. Awful.”

“Ah, but I have something that might help you,” said Toadflax. She got up and went to the cupboard. When she returned she set something down on the table.

It was round—about the size and shape of a loaf of bread—and wrapped in a soft brown cloth embroidered with oak leaves and acorns.

“A seeking stone!” gasped Bracken. “You have a
seeking stone
?”

Seeking stones were old and potent magic. You could gaze
into one and see another witch who had one, even if she was far away.

“I thought the seeking stones were all gone!” said Bracken. “Lost . . .”

“You were wrong,” said Toadflax as she pulled back the cloth.

The stone was a smooth blue-green, veined with darker green. “It takes two stones, working together, to see anything,” Toadflax said. “Now, listen closely. . . .”

But Nettle didn't.

She reached out, not thinking, and touched the stone's smooth surface. Instantly, a mist rose and swirled around her.

“Fool!” shrieked Toadflax, but already her voice seemed to come from someplace far away. “Not yet! You little . . .”

Then came blackness.

Time and space seemed to whoosh together.

The darkness whirled.

When it stopped, Nettle was standing in a vast sunlit room. On the far side, under an archway, stood a gaggle of human children. They were staring at her, eyes goggling, mouths wide open.

“A witch! It's a
witch
!” screamed one. They all began to yell and point.

Nettle stared back, frozen. If one came close she could spark it, but there were so many of them. . . .

“
QUIET!
” yelled a deep voice. A man and a woman appeared in the archway. “JASON. EMILY! GET BACK HERE! ALL OF YOU! GET BACK HERE RIGHT THIS MINUTE.”

“It's a witch!” said a girl, pointing.

“She's standing right there,” said a boy.

“Jason, that is not one bit funny,” said the man. “Line up, all of you. This field trip is
over
.”

“She is, she
is
!” said the girl. “There's a girl right there,
and she's wearing a witch costume, and she wasn't there a minute ago.”

“Emily, I am surprised at you,” said the woman. “Jason,
get back here
.” She grabbed the boy's arm and propelled him back in line.

Nettle held still as a rabbit, watching as the children slouched one behind the other into two long lines.

“Field trips,” sighed the man to the woman. “I don't know what gets into them.”

The woman glared at the children. “They opened up this whole museum, the entire Atkinson House, on a Friday afternoon
especially for our school
, and this is how you behave?”

Moans, grumbling.

“I don't know who is responsible for this stupid stunt,” she said, looking at Jason. “But let me just say it will be a
long time
before you are taken to another museum. AND I WILL BE SENDING HOME NOTES TO ALL YOUR PARENTS. Now get on the bus, all of you.”

The lines of children stumped sullenly through the archway, glancing back over their shoulders and muttering.

“Quit it,” said a girl, elbowing the boy named Jason. She was slightly taller than the others, with pale hair that fell to her shoulders. “Don't be such a jerk.”

She looked at Nettle for a moment, her face open and curious. She smiled and gave a tiny wave.

Then she was gone.

The thumping and bumping and yelling faded.

Deep silence fell, broken only by a hollow
tock, tock, tock
ing that seemed to come from another room. Late afternoon light slanted through the windows. A wide stairway curved gracefully upward. A thing that Nettle recognized (from
a picture in the
Cyclopedia
) as a chandelier hung from the room's high, ornate ceiling.

Doors made of panes of glass opened on a large garden—Nettle could see sunny flowerbeds and tree-shaded paths—enclosed on all sides by high stone walls. Nettle rattled the little brass lever on the doors, but they wouldn't open. She turned and noticed letters written above the archway where the children had been standing: This Way Out.

She went through the archway and down a hall. It opened into another room where two big doors were flanked by tall windows. She tried the doors, but they wouldn't open either. Outside, at the foot of a flight of marble steps, the children were filing toward something big and yellow and boxlike. Black lettering along its side said School District 561. A low, deep rumble came from within.

The children climbed in, jostling and yelling. A door slid shut. Then with a roar, the children were gone.

Nettle looked out at human houses, huge and square, each one standing next to the other in its own patch of short grass. She put her face close to the window and peered first one way then the other, but the street (for so it was, she knew from the pictures in the
Cyclopedia
) seemed to go on and on and on.

“Fool!” screeched Toadflax. She slammed her fist on the table. “Little ninny!”

Bracken gaped at the place where Nettle had been a moment before. “What
happened
?”

“All that magic,” groaned Toadflax. “Wasted!”

“Where's Nettle?”
cried Bracken.
“What happened?”

“She's in a city. On the Great River,” Toadflax snapped. “And it should have been you. But now . . . Curse the little fool. She'll never find it. Not by herself.”

“Find what?” said Bracken through clenched teeth.

“The Door. The Door to the other world, so we can get out of this wretched valley. There's a Safehouse near it. I sent her there.”

“She's where?” said Bracken numbly.

“She's in a Safehouse. In a human city.”

“You sent Nettle all by herself to a human city?”

“Not on purpose!” Toadflax glared. “You were the one I meant to send. You at least would have had a fighting chance.
Oh, she would have gone along. But not because I thought she'd be much use finding the Door.”

“Why couldn't
you
go?” said Bracken, glaring back. “If you want to find this Door so much? You with all your magic, what was stopping you?”

Toadflax laughed. “Me? Go myself? To a Safehouse in a gigantic human city? Child, I am
four hundred years old
! I wouldn't last a minute there, not a minute.”

“So you thought you'd send
us
, and instead you sent Nettle all by herself,” said Bracken. Her face was pale with anger.

“Listen, you,” said Toadflax in a voice like acid. “I gathered more magic than you can ever hope for, with more trouble than you can even imagine, to send you while you were still young enough to resist the Fading. While you still had some chance of finding the Door.” She glowered at Bracken. “We had one chance, and now it's gone. Gone.” Toadflax stared. “Don't you see? Without that Door we are doomed! That's why your mothers went looking for it. They were still young, but not young enough!”

Bracken felt a sudden chill. “Our mothers! You know what happened to our mothers?”

“Possibly,” said Toadflax.

“They went looking for the Door? I thought . . . I thought they went looking for our fathers.”

“They believed your fathers went through the Door.” Toadflax sighed impatiently. “So naturally they went looking for it.”

“But then the
Fading
got them?” cried Bracken.

“All we know is they never came back.” Toadflax shrugged. “Some who lose their powers turn to dust. But others just sink into forgetfulness. They become witches who are not witches. Lost, pitiful creatures. I myself would prefer dust.
And you?” she said suddenly. “Which will you prefer when the humans invade the valley?”

Bracken could not speak.

“You were
both
supposed to touch it, when I told you to,” said Toadflax. “When I'd explained everything! But she reached out her silly little hand. Without listening! Without waiting.”

“Nettle never listens! Don't you even know that?” yelled Bracken. “And don't call her stupid.”