The Blood Binding (4 page)

“But lunch is nearly over,”
complained Belladonna. “We’ll miss all our afternoon classes!”

“Sometimes sacrifices have to
be made.”

“We’re going to get in so
much trouble,” muttered Belladonna, as she joined the grinning Steve by the
door. “See you in a few minutes, Elsie.”

“Righty-ho!”

“Um…could you go first?”
asked Steve.

Belladonna rolled her eyes
and took his key-ring flashlight.

“Honestly,” she said. “I
don’t see how you can be so scared of leggy insects when you keep dropping
spiders onto the chess club’s boards.”

“That’s different. It isn’t
dark.”

“That makes no sense,”
muttered Belladonna as they stepped through the door and started the descent.

Journeys usually feel shorter
once you’ve done them a few times, but the aged winding staircase beneath the
school library always felt never ending. Eventually, however, they arrived in
the Cumaean Sibyl’s temple. The torches on either side of the great stone chair
sprang to life and the Sibyl’s disembodied voice echoed around the chamber.

“WHO DARES TO…oh, it’s you
again.”

“Yes, sorry,” said
Belladonna. “But we just need to use the lift.”

“You don’t need to know the
future?”

“Not this time. Thanks,
though,” said Steve.

“Not even a little?” asked
the Sibyl, rather plaintively. “I could tell you if it’s going to rain
tomorrow.”

“We don’t really need an
oracle for that,” said Steve, smiling. “Maybe next time.”

“’Bye,” said Belladonna.
“Sorry.”

“Typical,” muttered the
Sibyl.

“
Arate Thyras!”
commanded Belladonna.

“Oh, I see,” complained the
voice of the Sibyl, which had moved from the vicinity of the great stone chair
to somewhere up in the ceiling near the stairs. “Now you know ancient Greek.
Very clever.”

The doors of the elevator
slid open and Belladonna and Steve stepped inside. Steve pressed the
now-familiar button for the Land of the Dead, and the lift shot off sideways,
before descending rapidly at a slight angle and landing with a bump.

Belladonna said the ancient
Greek for “open the doors” again and they found themselves back in the huge
rotunda of the House of Mists, the home of the ghosts’ seat of government, the
Conclave of Shadow.

Elsie was waiting, but other
than that, the building was strangely silent.

“Where is everyone?” asked
Belladonna.

“Getting ready for
Halloween,” said Elsie. “Come on, she’s in the garden.”

She led they way out of the
huge doors, across the pillared portico, and down to the garden that had so
impressed Belladonna the first time she saw it, with its lawns and arbors,
interlocking flower beds and meandering paths. It had been beautiful then, even
though everything had been dead, but now it was simply glorious, the flowers
and foliage cascading over each other in a riot of color and fragrance.

Elsie walked to the small
pavilion in the center of the garden and tapped on the side of the open door.

“Hello?” she called,
cautiously.

“Just a moment! I’m thinning
a seedbox!” The voice was slightly husky and ridiculously posh, like people in
old movies.

“I bet she’s got secateurs,”
whispered Steve.

“Shh!”

“Ah, well now! What can I do
for you?”

Even though Belladonna knew
that the dead could choose to be any age they wanted, for some reason she had
still been expecting a ninety year old woman. But the girl who stepped out into
the sunlight was young and hearty, her cheeks flushed pink from working. She
was wearing an elegant pale blue and white striped crinoline dress, but had
hoisted the hem nearly up to her knees with yellow drawstrings knotted at her
waist. On her feet were a pair of high button boots, somewhat muddy from
working in the beds, while elegant gardening gloves protected her hands.

“Hello, Miss Jekyll,” said
Belladonna, shaking her hand.

“It’s pronounced Jeekle,
actually, but please just call me Gertrude.”

“Really?” said Steve. “But
what about ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?’”

“That is supposed to be
pronounced Jeekle too, dear. Robert Louis Stevenson was a friend of my
brother’s, you see. So…young Elsie, here, tells me you’re looking for a plant.”

“Yes,” said Belladonna,
pleased that she wasn’t going to have to explain the whole thing again. “It’s
called…um…hang on…”

She retrieved the list from
her pocket and handed it to Gertrude.

“My goodness,” she said.
“What appalling handwriting you have. Don’t they teach copperplate any more?”

“No,” said Steve. “They’re
mostly pleased if we can string a few sentences together without saying ‘axe,
‘like,’ or ‘y’know.’”

“Dear me. You’ll be telling
me we’ve lost the Empire, next.”

“Well, actually--” began
Steve.

“It’s the last one,” said
Belladonna, hastily, digging Steve in the ribs.

“Laserpiciferis,” read
Gertrude. “Well, I’ve heard of it, of course, but it was extinct well before my
time. Let’s ask Seneca, he’s up at the house.”

“Really?” said Steve. “I
thought everyone was getting ready for these parties we’ve been hearing so much
about.”

“Stoic philosophers don’t go
to parties, dear. Come along!”

She grabbed a large sun hat
from a chair near the door, tied the ribbons under her chin, and marched back
toward the house with Belladonna, Steve and Elsie running to catch up.

She finally stopped in the
middle of the rotunda, and yelled: “Seneca!”

No reply.

“Come along, Seneca, I know
you’re here! It’s Gertrude!”

A door creaked open near the
stairs and a sour-faced man peered out.

“I don’t care who it is. I’m
not going to any blasted parties!”

“We’re not trying to get you
to go to a party, dear, we just want to know what a plant looked like.”

“What plant?”

“
Laserpiciferis
,” said Belladonna.

“Are you alive?” asked
Seneca, looking her up and down.

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s extinct.”

“We know that,” said Steve.
“We just want to know what it looked like.”

“Humph,” growled Seneca.
“Wait here.”

The door closed with a click
that was followed by the sound of rummaging and things falling off shelves.
Then, just as Belladonna had decided he wasn’t going to come back, the door
creaked open again and Seneca thrust an unrolled scroll at Gertrude.

“That’s it. The one on the
left.”

“Oh, I know where that is!”
said Gertrude. “Thank you, Seneca. Come along everyone!”

And she was off again, out of
the doors and down the garden.

“I wonder if she had this
much energy when she was alive,” muttered Steve.

“Probably,” said Elsie. “She
was telling me how many gardens she’d done. It made me tired just thinking
about it.”

They finally caught up with
her at the far end of the garden in a sunny spot near a gurgling stream.
Gertrude pointed to a clump of sturdy green plants near the water’s edge.

“That’s it,” she said.

Belladonna bent down and
started picking leaves.

“I don’t think that’s what
you need, dear. I’ve read that the ancient Romans valued it for its resin. You’ll
need to cut through the stalk.”

Belladonna tried pulling one
of the plants out of the ground, but it didn’t budge. Gertrude smiled, moved
Belladonna gently aside, then reached into her pocket, took out a pair of
clippers and went to work on the stalk.

“My goodness!” she said,
stepping back. “That is a very tough plant!”

Belladonna turned and looked
at Steve.

“This is so weird,” he said,
stepping forward and taking the ruler out of his pocket. It instantly turned
into the secateurs again. He leaned down and snipped through the stalk as if it
were nothing more than a dandelion.

“Wait a minute,” gasped
Gertrude. “Is that the Rod of Gram?”

“Yes,” said Steve, pocketing
the ruler once again.

“So you’re the Paladin? Then
that must mean…”

“Yes,” said Belladonna, a
little sheepishly. “I’m the Spellbinder.”

“Well, I never! What an
honor! And in my garden, too!”

“Thanks for helping us,” said
Belladonna. “The garden is lovely.”

“Not at all. I’ll walk with
you back to the lift.”

She set off more slowly this
time, showing off her garden and explaining her plantings and why she’d chosen
the different flowers and shrubs. By the time they reached the House of Mists
again, Belladonna was so enchanted with the tour that she’d almost forgotten
why they’d come.

“Thank you so much,” she
said, really meaning it and shaking Gertrude’s hand.

“Not at all. You must go and
see some of my gardens. I believe quite a few still exist.”

“We will.”

Elsie pushed the button for
the elevator and the doors slid open.

“See you later!”

As usual, the elevator didn’t
return them to the oracle, but to the groundsman’s shed near the football
pitch. It was almost completely dark, but they were able to find the nettles
and burdock with Steve’s flashlight. Belladonna wrapped the stinging nettles in
a tissue from her pocket and they returned to the school to retrieve their
coats and bags, which they managed to do without being caught, much to their
amazement.

“There must be a staff
meeting or something,” said Steve, as they slipped outside and walked up the
steps to the convent.

Belladonna rang the doorbell,
which was answered by a rather surprised nun. Steve explained that they needed
some crabapples for a class project and that someone had told them the convent
had a tree.

“We were wondering if we could
have a few?”

“Why, certainly,” said the
nun.

She asked them to step
inside, then disappeared down a long corridor, reappearing a moment later, from
a completely different direction, with a small plastic bag of crabapples.

“Will that be enough?”

“Yes,” said Belladonna,
smiling. “Thank you very much!”

They picked up the rest of
the herbs on the way back to Lychgate Lane, buying the fennel and apple juice at
the green grocers, and plucking a few leaves of mugwort and hosta from the
garden next door.

“I’m home!” yelled Belladonna
as they walked into the house. “Steve is here!”

“Hello, Steve!” said Mr. Johnson
cheerily as he floated an inch or two above his easy chair, watching the news.
“Are you staying for dinner?”

“No thanks,” said Steve. “I
promised I’d help dad in the shop. The Christmas stuff will be in soon and we
need to make room.”

“We’ve just come to make a
potion.”

“Splendid. Your grandmother’s
in the kitchen, I know she’d love to help with that.”

Of course, Grandma Johnson
was thrilled, and soon had the kitchen counters festooned with bowls, spoons,
whisks and a pestle and mortar.

“Um…Actually, I think the
food processor might work best,” said Belladonna.

“But where’s the fun in that?
Come on now, let’s get mixing!”

Belladonna got the chamomile
and dried thyme out of the cupboard and added it to everything else, while
Steve poured some of the apple juice over the whole lot until they had a kind
of muddy liquid.

“Right,” said Grandma
Johnson. “That smells suitably vile. I gather this is something to do with the
bog girl you met yesterday?”

“Yes,” said Belladonna. “Her
uncle said the Spirits of the Black Water don’t really need a blood binding. He
said this might work instead.”

“The operative word being
‘might,’” said Steve. “I’ve never met such a miserable bloke in all my life.”

“Well, he
was
needlessly
sacrificed in a swamp, Stephen,” said Grandma Johnson. “I can see how that
might color your outlook. So what do you have to do with it? Smear it on a tree
or something?”

“No. I think we need to sort
of pour it around the area where they are going to be bound.”

“Ah, I see. A little more
apple juice, I think, then, Steve.”

Steve poured and stirred
while Grandma Johnson searched through the cupboards, eventually producing one
of the plastic bottles that Belladonna’s mum used for drizzling sauces.

Belladonna poured it in,
screwed on the top and pushed the cap onto the nozzle.

“Where is it you’re going?”
asked Grandma Johnson, putting the bottle into the fridge.

“The Roman fort near Hegland
Moss,” said Steve.

“That’s quite a long way. I’d
drive you, but I’ve got clients all day tomorrow. There’s always a rush at
Halloween. We’d better ask your dad.”

They trooped into the living
room and explained the problem. Mr. Johnson turned the sound down on the
television, thought for a moment and then started going on about A-roads and
turning at lights.

“No, no,” said Grandma
Johnson, a little impatiently. “They’re thirteen. Bus routes. They need bus
routes.”

“Oh, right. Um…are you sure
this is entirely safe? What if it goes wrong and you both die? I’ll never hear
the end of it from your mum, I can tell you!”

“Of course it’s safe,” lied
Steve. “I mean, they’re already bound, aren’t they? We’re just going to sort of
double-bind them so that Branwyn can leave and go to the Other Side.”

“She’s been sitting there
soaking wet for nearly two thousand years, dad,” said Belladonna, hoping that
he wasn’t going to have one of those “responsible parent” moments.

“That is pretty unpleasant, I
must admit,” he said, thoughtfully. “I’ll tell you what, so long as you both go
first thing and promise to get back before dark, I just won’t mention it to
your mum. Deal?”

“Deal,” said Steve and
Belladonna in unison.

“Thanks, dad.”

“Okay, so…buses…I’d say the
25 to Staple Street, then the 61. That’ll drop you in Grafton village, then
it’s just a short walk. Daylight, though, right? No lingering!”

“Promise!”

Belladonna walked Steve out
to the door.

“Your dad is ace. Mine would
never let me do anything like this, particularly since mum left. I never tell
him anything I’m doing.”

“Dad and Grandma Johnson are
completely irresponsible,” explained Belladonna, smiling. “Mum’s going to kill
him when she finds out.”

“He’s already dead.”

“You don’t know mum,” said
Belladonna, grinning.

She watched Steve walk down
the path and away down the street. It was strange to think that she was going
to spend her evening in front of the fire, watching TV and talking to her dad
and grandma while Steve would be spending his helping to clear out a storeroom
in a freezing shop.

“Staunchly Springs” had just
ended (with the startling revelation that George’s half-brother, Phil, was
actually his mother’s best friend’s grandmother’s sister’s child and his real
name was Francine), when Belladonna suddenly jumped to her feet.

“We forgot one!”

“Heaven’s, Belladonna!”
gasped Grandma Johnson. “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

“You forgot one what?” asked
her dad.

“One of the herbs. Betony.
It’s supposed to grow in church yards. We were going to check St. Abelard’s but
I forgot.”

Her dad looked at his mother
and sighed.

“Well, I can’t leave the
house,” he said. “And there’s no way she’s going alone in the dark.”

Grandma Johnson heaved
herself to her feet.

“Come on then,” she said.
“Let’s make it quick before “Great British Bake Off” starts.”

Belladonna threw on her
jacket and grabbed a flashlight, then waited impatiently while Grandma Johnson
wound a long woolen scarf three times around her neck, fastened her coat right
up to the top, pulled on a hat, put on her gloves and picked up her umbrella.

“It’s not the Arctic, grandma!”

“When you get to my age, you
chill easily. Now come on.”

They walked down Lychgate Lane to the church, with Grandma Johnson admiring the houses that had put up
Halloween decorations and tut-tutting the ones that hadn’t.

“Some people are just
party-poopers,” she muttered.

Belladonna stopped across the
street from the church. She couldn’t risk taking her grandmother in and
frightening off the charnel sprites, so she convinced her to wait, turned on
the flashlight and walked into the wet and weedy churchyard alone.

“Aya!” she called, as loud as
she dared. “Aya! Are you here?”

“Of course I’m here!” said a
familiar voice right behind her. “Charnel sprites love Halloween.”

“Let me guess,” said
Belladonna, turning around and lowering the flashlight to charnel sprite
height. “Parties?”

“Absolutely,” said Aya,
enthusiastically, her slightly purple skin shimmering in the light. “Wouldn’t
miss it for the world. It’s like old home week. What are you doing here at this
time of night? Not calling the Hunt again, I hope.”

“I need some betony,”
explained Belladonna. “I read that they used to plant it in graveyards to
discourage ghosts.”

“Silly humans,” giggled Aya.
“There’s some over here.”

Belladonna followed the
charnel sprite to the far side of the church and picked some leaves of the
missing ingredient.

“Are you making the Nine
Herbs Charm?”

“Sort of,” said Belladonna. “But
with two more to make eleven. It’s for a binding.”

She explained about Branwyn
and the Spirits of the Black Water.

“Ugh,” said Aya, shuddering.
“Old Magic. Branwyn won’t know the way to the Other Side, though. I’ll make
sure our local office sends someone.”

“Thanks. I didn’t know you
had regional charnel sprite offices.”

“Of course we do! How else
could we manage? You lot are constantly popping off.”

Belladonna smiled, thanked
Aya again, and returned to her grandmother. It was the semi-final of “Great
British Bake Off,” which Grandma Johnson wouldn’t dream of missing, so it was
nearly bed time before they were able to add the betony to the binding potion.

“So much for an early night,”
said Belladonna.

“Don’t worry,” said her dad.
“I’ll make sure you’re up in time.”

She blew him a kiss
goodnight, gave her grandma a hug and headed upstairs to bed. She was tired,
but sleep wouldn’t come. Tomorrow would be something different, it wasn’t going
to be about the Words or anything to do with being the Spellbinder, really. It
was about Old Magic and she wasn’t sure how it would work or even if it would
do anything at all. She didn’t even know anything about the spirits they were
trying to bind. What if they made it worse and released them by mistake? She
kept wishing that Miss Parker was around. But then maybe she’d say the same
thing as Mrs. Jay—that some things can’t be fixed.

That was probably true, but
Belladonna couldn’t help feeling that the least a person could do was try.