Shamanka (10 page)

All of which was rather negative, but don't be too harsh on him; he had a lot in his mind – far more than you realize because you don't know the half of it yet.

“Where did my father go after he left here?” asks Sam. “Did he say?”

It seems that he wanted to continue his search for Kitty in the hope that she could shed some light on the fate of his daughter. He'd told Ruth he was off to visit a friend of his father's, someone with a reputation for finding missing persons; a certain Mrs Reafy.

“But that's who I was on my way to see!” exclaims Sam.

“There's a surprise,” yawns Ruth. “It's three minutes past three in the morning. I'll sleep in this chair, you can borrow my bed and tomorrow you can be on your way.”

Sam tosses and turns on the witch's mattress, thinking of her father and Lola and wishing she could find them and say, “Hey, I'm alive! Now we can all be happy.”

But are
they
still alive? Maybe her dreams would tell her – but how can she dream if she can't sleep? Perhaps it would help if she read for a while. She picks up the witch doctor's notebook and tries to open it, but the pages refuse to turn. She has no choice but to study the list on the inside cover again. Right at the top, jostling for position with Mrs Reafy, are three other names.

Effie Ray, Bart Hayfue and Ruth Abafey.

While many essential oils have healing properties, it's important to focus your intent to enhance this recipe magically. Witches define magic as the ability to create change by force of will; in other words, you may get what you wish for if you really put your mind to it.

You need:

A small sterile bottle, clearly labelled

3 tablespoons base oil (sweet almond or wheatgerm)

3 teaspoons frankincense

1 teaspoon juniper berries

1 teaspoon fennel

3 drops of rue

Method:

1. Gather ingredients during a full moon.

2. Pour the base oil into the bottle.

3. Add rest of ingredients.

4. Replace lid. Store in a cool, dark place until needed.

5. Anoint your temple with a thin smear, also your third eye and wrists.

6. Go about your intent with courage.

WARNING: DO NOT DRINK

I
t's Wednesday morning and, according to the witch, Wednesday is the best day to travel.

Just to make sure, she's anointed Sam with home-made Magic Protective Oil. Is it really magic? The more you believe it, the more potent it becomes – or so I'm told. If you truly believe, it'll make you feel invincible. Your enemies will notice this and because you appear so powerful, they'll leave you alone and pick on someone weaker. This oil will also protect you from fierce animals. Even if you are frightened the herbs will disguise the smell of fear and they'll go and tear the throat out of some other poor wretch.

The train journey to St Albans is not particularly treacherous unless you eat the stale sandwiches from the buffet car. Even so, the witch won't take any risks with her young friend. At sunrise, Sam awakes to find her arranging five coloured candles at various compass points on the floor. She lights them with a taper.

“Don't tell me. You haven't paid your electricity bill and you've been cut off,” says Sam. It happened to Aunt Candy all the time.

Ruth pulls a face. “I'm
casting
a circle, a space between the worlds where a witch does her work. Each candle represents one of five elements: air, fire, water, earth and spirit, and—”

“My friend Bart says there're no such things as spirits,” Sam interrupts. “Do you really think there's a spirit world?”

“See for yourself.”

The witch beckons her into the circle. Sam walks around it anti-clockwise – Ruth throws her hands up in the air.

“No, not
widdershins
! Clockwise! Sit in the centre!”

Sam sits and waits and waits, then a voice which she knows to be Ruth's but which sounds much further away murmurs in her ear.

“Close your eyes. Sink slowly down, down, to the centre of the Earth…”

Sam melts through the floorboards, through the floury foundations of the waiting room, through the layers of grey clay veined with pale tubes. At first she thinks they're worms, but these are the roots of Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life.

She falls further, past the layer of tilth sieved by moles, past seams of prehistoric silt, past mausoleums of prehistoric creatures, until she is beneath the taproot of the tree.

Here is a chamber beneath the arc of roots; an organic cathedral. There's a table with a sheet of paper on it. Write your name down, Sam Tabuh. Knock three times on the table. To your left there is a doorway covered by a blue veil. Ask your spirit guide to appear.

Knock. Knock. Knock
.

Sam watches and waits for the veil to twitch. There's no breeze, yet the corner is lifting slightly. Someone's coming. She hears the faint pounding of the drum, or is it the molten thump of the Earth's heart?

“My name is Freya.”

It's a woman's voice, but no one's there. Did Sam blink or is she invisible? Open your eyes. Sam is back in the waiting room staring into the candle flame that represents Earth. For the first time, she understands what she's made from; just as cakes are made from flour, sugar, eggs and butter, she is made from earth, water, fire and air. She is stardust and seawater. These are the basic ingredients needed to make every creature from hippos to humans, but what is the magic ingredient that makes her
Sam
– is that spirit? Is Freya her spirit guide?

Ruth stares pointedly at Sam's locket. “The Norse goddess of love was called Freya. Her symbol was a shell.”

Armed with her witch's cord, protective oil and the possibility of a kindly spirit watching over her, Sam is pointed in the direction of West India Quay. As she leaves the waiting room, she feels a rare urge to fling her arms around Ruth Abafey – but she doesn't. She's been starved of human touch for so long, the idea makes her feel peculiar. Even so, she's grown fond of this lady. No one has ever looked after her so carefully – apart from Lola – and while it's wonderful to be loved by an ape, it's not the same as being loved by one of your own species.

“I wonder if we'll ever see each other again, Ruth?”

“Sure, sure. In some form or another.” The witch presses a twenty pound note into Sam's hand as if she were her favourite grandchild and sends her on her way.

The journey to St Albans passes without event. If Sam hadn't had to wait so long for a bus from the station, she'd have been standing outside Mrs Reafy's ages ago. She'd found her address in a public phone book easily enough and has an excellent sense of direction.

She knocks. She hears someone slamming a pan down on a stove, then slippered footsteps. The door opens and there's Mrs Reafy clutching a wooden spoon coated in hot jam, her hair bristling with static as if she'd recently shoved her finger in a socket.

“Burnt!” she snaps. “The saucepan's ruined. What do you want? Lost your tongue?”

“No, I've lost my orang-utan.”

Sam had learnt after years of dealing with Aunt Candy that if a person is in a rage, the best way to diffuse the situation is to say something unexpected.

“Lost your
orang-utan
?”

“Yes. And my father.”

Mrs Reafy pushes her raspberry-spattered spectacles back up her nose and sniffs. “That was careless, wasn't it? You're sure they didn't run off together?”

Sam frowns. This is no joking matter and she explains that although she doesn't have an appointment, it is an
emergency
.

“Where did you find me, Yellow Pages?”

The pages in the witch doctor's notebook are rather yellow, so she nods and Mrs Reafy lets her in.

The smell of burnt sugar is overpowering. It looks as if there's been a massacre in the kitchen. There are thick clots all over the floor, red smears on the windows and what look like bloody fingerprints on the tea towels. It's only jam, but it's amazing how far it can spread once it gets out of control.

“I blame this oven,” says Mrs Reafy. “We don't get along at all.” After a short while in her company, Sam realizes that Mrs Reafy refers to every object in the house as if it has a personality. She even refers to her kettle as the son of the devil and scolds it when it blows a fuse.

“He hates me! He's showing off because you're here.” She raps the kettle on the lid then spends the next five minutes scrubbing the sticky spoon as if it's a sulky child with jam round its face. Sam wonders if she behaves like this because she's lonely, but it soon becomes clear that Mrs Reafy
does
get a reaction from everything she touches. It's this – she tells Sam – that gives her the paranormal ability to contact missing persons.

She takes Sam into the living room and explains that certain objects absorb the emotions of the people they belong to. She can read these emotions; if she holds something belonging to a missing person, she often receives a mental snapshot of where they are. Sam is fascinated.

“How do you do it? Is it magic?” She pulls a coin out from behind Mrs Reafy's ear, wraps it in kitchen paper and tears it in half. It's a good trick but her audience is not impressed.

“Magic? Oh, please. Psychometry isn't a cheap trick. It's a rare gift, a talent I was born with. Either you have it or you don't.”

Sam's not convinced. “If it's not magic, there must be some scientific explanation, surely?”

“Must there?” huffs Mrs Reafy. “I disagree. Magic is a swear word used by idiots to describe things science cannot explain. I find it offensive and so does my spoon.”

“But how can a spoon have feelings?”

“It's made from wood, wood has a heart,” says Mrs Reafy. “The wood in
this
spoon came from an eaglewood tree in which there lived a crow. One day, the crow's eggs were broken and the cry of the crow and the yolk from her broken eggs seeped into the wood. When the wood was carved into this spoon, the crow's cry remained in every fibre, right down to the handle.”

“Poor spoon,” says Sam.

“Not poor spoon, poor
crow
!” insists Mrs Reafy. “
She
was the one who had her eggs broken, and what does this spoon do for a living? It breaks eggs! It offends the spirit of the crow. See how everything connects? In respect for the crow, I have demoted this spoon to jam-stirring duties only. I won't let it near an egg and that's why it's cross with me. The cooker felt sorry for the spoon and between them, they cooked up a plot to burn my jam.” She raps the spoon loudly on the table as if to punish it. “This missing orang-utan of yours – what does it look like?”

It's tempting to say “Just like you!” because Mrs Reafy's stomach protrudes, her hair is bright orange and her arms are surprisingly hairy. The features that make an orang-utan beautiful are not those most woman aspire to – the whims of fashion are cruel.

“Lola is a redhead with brown eyes and a charming smile,” says Sam. “She likes working with children and she can do magic tricks. Does that help?”

“What I need,” says Mrs Reafy, “is something that belongs to her.”

Sam gives her Lola's toy monkey. Mrs Reafy examines its glass eyes and checks its stuffing. Having done so, she sits it on her lap, holds it under the armpits and closes her eyes. After a moment, she's full of inspiration.

“Lola is a much loved pet. She came from far away … from a rainforest … Borneo … or is it Sumatra?”

Sam groans inwardly. This is nothing more than educated guesswork. Orang-utans only come from Borneo and Sumatra; the revelation is hardly psychic. But what she says next makes the hairs on Sam's neck stand up.

“Lola was orphaned … rescued as a baby by a woman studying tribespeople. Lola travelled with her across a stretch of water … to a different forest. I am not certain of its name… I am not getting anything else.”

“Please try!” says Sam. “Do you see a little boy with her at all?”

Mrs Reafy blinks rapidly. “Wait! I see a sharp object … a dart? A boy is crying…”

“That's him! Is he wearing a bush hat?” asks Sam, unable to contain herself.

Mrs Reafy opens her eyes and glares at her. “You've interrupted my flow. It'll take ages to get back to where I was. I need
silence
. Go to the kitchen and wipe up the jam.”

Reluctantly, Sam leaves the room.

Pendulums can be used to detect water, divine the sex of unborn babies, diagnose illness and find lost objects or people.

1. To make a pendulum tie a finger ring onto a fine thread about 30–45 cm long.

2. Hold the end lightly between the thumb and first two fingers of one hand at shoulder height.