The Watching Wood (11 page)

Jenny nudged Grace in the ribs and growled through gritted teeth.

‘Say something. Say you’re a witch.’

Grace was so dizzy with worry she thought she might faint. She felt another nudge.

‘I am a witch!’ The sound was high-pitched and strained coming from her tightening throat. ‘I
am
a witch. I am a witch.’

‘I’m not a witch!’

She jumped at the sound of her own frightened voice coming back at her. It was emanating from a ball in Victoria’s outstretched hand.

‘I’m not a witch! I’m not a witch! I’m not a witch!’

So there
had
been footsteps behind Grace when she left the castle that afternoon. Cloaked, Victoria must have followed her to the pebble beach, and recorded her terrified denials in the firefly woods.

‘Backward beings,’ Madame Three shrieked. ‘Stealing our preciousness. They taint our very lives with their dirty beingness! To the dungeons!’

There was a cheer from the crowd. In the front row Grace could see Aura’s troubled looks, her team stood and clapped, but she remained seated.

‘Perhaps,’ Lady Hecate said, quietening the noise. ‘But by Wiccan Law we must follow the proper proceedings. An impartial court will decide their fate based on the evidence.’ Her eyes turned on Grace. ‘Until then, no more repellent forgery will be permitted in Tithon.’

Clanging in the castle.

‘Oh, fudgeballs,’ groaned Una.

Four binding rings clashed and banged their way to the arena, their metals ringing with vibration. Bruising pain hit Grace as one snapped around her ankle. Adie, Delilah and Una all cried out.

‘To the Black Turret then?’ Madame Three looked
eagerly at Lady Hecate.

‘Lord Machlau?’ she said.

The stooped Lord fired one finger in the air, pointing to a dark turret that stood at the far end of the castle, and Madame Three laughed in triumph.

‘And then the dungeons,’ she squealed. ‘To squirm with the wrigglies and the ones that are squished.’

Lady Hecate paused.

‘Quite.’

Before she became queen, Elizabeth I had been locked in the Tower of London by her half-sister, Mary, who was afraid she’d try and nick the throne. Grace had seen a documentary once that showed some of the cells in the Tower, so she knew what to expect: small stone rooms, with archways that led nowhere, little daylight, damp-stained floors and ceilings, black and dark green mould up the walls. The Black Turret had all this and more – for in their cell, there was hardly any space to sit down, due to piles of old junk stacked against every available inch of wall.

The long walk up the seemingly endless spiral staircase had left Grace short of breath. She had considered their chances, if she and her friends were to make a break for it and try to run, but they were now without any magic, and surrounded by those with it. Madame Three had herded them into the
turret like sheep, poking them with a sharp staff when they moved too slowly.

‘Up the steps, one step, two step, one step … no talking with your loud legs. Move, move, move.’

The stout woman’s weirdly plump face was the last thing they saw before the heavy door swung shut and there was the
clunk-clunk
of a key turning in the lock.

Una collapsed against the rusted remains of a bed frame that stood on end by one of the small windows.

‘What the hell do we do now?’

‘I’m sorry everyone,’ Grace said, ‘I’d no idea it would get us into this kind of trouble.’

‘Grace,’ Jenny said firmly, ‘this isn’t your fault. We’d have been set up by that Meister cow one way or another. We just have to find a way out of this.’

‘How?’

‘Delilah, you know more about this stuff than any of us. Is there any way to get the binding rings off?’

Delilah was sitting on her hunkers in the corner, her fingers hooked around the bars of a small cage as she peered inside.

‘No,’ she said softly, still distracted, ‘not without magic.’

‘Fudge!’ Jenny’s sudden shout made everyone jump. ‘Sorry, sorry, lost it there for a sec. Sorry about that. Well then, we’ll have to do a jailbreak the old-fashioned way.’

‘Meaning?’ Adie said.

‘Climb out the windows and abseil down the turret.’

‘You got some rope for that, Rapunzel?’ Una said, leaning out one of the glassless windows. ‘’Cos it’s a long way down.’

‘Rope! That’s what we need! There’s bound to be something in all this rubbish. Come on.’

Half an hour, and a lot of digging later, Grace, Adie, Jenny and Una sprawled in various levels of discomfort, more depressed than ever. There was no rope. And nothing they could use as a substitute.

‘Where do we pee?’ Una said suddenly.

Grace looked around, but Jenny answered first.

‘There’s a bucket in that archway over there.’

‘Ah, here! No way, that’s totally inhumane.’ She looked to the others as if one of them could materialise a bathroom, then crossed her legs. ‘I’ll hold it.’

Quiet fell as the room filled with the green-laced orange light of sunset. Grace looked to the corner and realised Delilah hadn’t left her spot by the little cage.

The small girl felt her gaze on her and smiled. ‘It’s the wood nymph.’

‘Huh?’

‘From the Glamour Trial.’ Delilah’s fingertips gently traced the thin bars.

‘Hey,’ Jenny said, leaning in to get a good look. ‘It
is
the nymph. They must stash him up here when they’re not using him.’ She poked a finger through the bars, then leapt back
and squealed. ‘Ow! Bit me, little brat.’

‘So cruel,’ Delilah’s voice was still soft. ‘To use him. Treat him like a thing. And he’s never free.’

Grace saw a single tear spill down Delilah’s cheek as her fingers felt for the lock.

‘Wait, Delilah!’ said Grace.

But the small girl had already opened the cage door and sat back against the wall. The nymph remained crouched inside the bars; he’d been teased like this many times before. Delilah stayed clear of the cage and closed her eyes.

‘He’ll come out when he’s ready.’

11

A Witch Trial

It lurked at the back of the cell, its breathing guttural and thick. She had caught a glimpse of it when she moved from the door to the far corner, but night was falling and, with no lamp inside the room, it remained disguised in the shadows. Except for its eyes. Two narrow flecks of grey, glowing in the darkness. They never blinked.

Arboraceous
. That was how Aruj had described it. Black, branch-like limbs, sharp and angular, sick with rot. A triangular head, dead grey eyes, and a thin mouth full of needle-pointed teeth. Its woody claws scraped on the hard, clay floor as it moved.

Rachel couldn’t glamour this breed, not without getting a closer look at it, and she hadn’t reached the arboraceous section of the
Faery Encyclopaedia
she had been given to learn.
There were countless species of faery, she was sure she could never learn them all.

Aruj had advised against glamouring into the same species as you were trying to fool. It was safer to choose another species.

‘It’s too close to home,’ he had said. ‘A faery will usually recognise its own breed. And will easily reject that which is not.’

But Rachel reminded Aruj that she had glamoured a wood nymph to fool a wood nymph, and it had worked perfectly.

This time she picked a bogle. About two feet high, and grey in colour, she thought it somewhat resembled the creature that was making the hairs stand up on the back of her neck, though it was smaller and much less threatening. To choose a more commanding faery, she felt, would be the wrong way to go with this one. He was the scarier animal in the room, and she meant to keep it that way.

It was slow work. As a bogle, she pottered about the floor, throwing the dark thing playful glances, then ignoring it and pretending she had found something terribly amusing on the dusty floor. Then she’d jump up and smile at it again.

I’m harmless
, was the message she was trying to give out.
You can come as close as you want
.

The glamour covered her Hunter clothes and, beneath her leather jerkin, the silver dagger.

After some time the creature began to move a little closer.
It wasn’t so much interested in her as it was less bothered by her presence. Its pacing became more relaxed and took up more of the cell. The nearer it came, the more Rachel could hear of its breathing, the
glig glig glig
of exhaled air through its mucus-coated throat. She tried to stay calm, forcing herself to turn her back occasionally, so that her pottering looked innocent.

‘B
ooo
gle.’

The voice was so inhuman, she didn’t immediately recognise it as speech. The word sounded like something produced by one of those talking dogs or cats on the internet, a mouth forming sounds it wasn’t designed to make.

‘B
ooo
gle.’

She had her back to the creature for the last phlegmy syllable and when she turned around the grey eyes were right in front of her. She jumped, the eyes faltering as her glamour wavered.

Concentrate
, she said to herself.
And ignore the
…

Teeth
. Like yellow needles. More than she could count. The gremlin head dipped from side to side, taking a careful look at her. Something ticked in its mouth, like it was tutting. She swallowed hard, trying not to stare into the dead eyes. Up close its scent was pungent – the smell of dank forest, blighted by fungus and mould. It stung her nostrils and made her want to sneeze. As it breathed on her, the smell was infinitely worse.

‘B
ooo
gle.’

She trembled, trying to block out the voice and the smell and … With the sound of snapping twigs the creature shot away from her and clung to the wall, its long, splintered limbs throwing eerily sharp shadows.

‘
Hessssssss
.’ The hissing was so loud she could feel it rattling her inner ear.

She had felt the glamour fall, just for a split second, but it was long enough for the creature to see something. She dropped the façade altogether, and pulled the dagger from beneath her jerkin. But the creature had braced itself against the clay wall, inches from the door, ready to pounce. She couldn’t get past it.

‘
Hessssssss
.’ Its black tongue wriggled through its teeth.

‘Aruj?’ Rachel whimpered.

There was no sound from outside.

‘Aruj? Help me. Please!’

Still nothing.

‘
Hessssssss
!’

The creature bared its awful yellow teeth and crouched into its creaking limbs.

‘
Aruj
!’

It sprang at her, like some giant insect, pinning her to the ground, its pointed claws and knees digging into her legs and arms. She screamed and wrenched herself to one side, but the creature rolled her until it pinned her again. With the
stench of it clouding the air, the wicked mouth pulled wide and lunged at her face.

‘
Hessssssss
!’

The dagger pierced the animal just under the ribs. Sticky brown sap spilled over Rachel’s hand as she turned her head away from it and cried into the clay, waiting for the hissing to stop.

Finally, the wheeze faded to nothing and the whole weight of the jagged body sagged on top of her. With her eyes still closed Rachel lay frozen beneath the creature and her tears turned the clay to mud.

‘Enter the accused!’

The girls looked around, perplexed. They had been brought to a makeshift courtroom, and sat on the right behind a table facing a high bench and three empty chairs. To their left sat the Hawk Falls girls, perfectly prim and facing the bench with barely concealed smirks. Those students that had been quick to queue that morning had succeeded in filling the limited seating in the pews behind them. There was no seating for a jury, so Grace had to assume this would be judge-only trial.

‘Enter the accused!’ Madame Three yelled again. She stood next to the bench like a bailiff.

‘We’re already here,’ Una said.

Madame Three squinted at them, even though she had already poked Grace twice with her staff before the proceedings had begun.

‘Enter the judges!’ she yelled, apparently satisfied.

Lord Machlau shuffled in to take the empty seat far right of the bench. Lady Hecate followed him grandly. When both were seated, Madame Three stamped her way behind the bench and sat down. Grace gaped.

‘
They’re
the judges?’ Adie whispered.

‘Oh, what?’ Jenny said out loud. ‘That’s just mental.’

‘Silence in the courtroom.’ Lady Hecate banged a gavel on the bench. ‘St John’s of Dunbridge, you are accused of being human, and of using Wiccan powers to bring disgrace to the Witch Trials of Tithon Castle. How do you plead?’

‘Guilty,’ a voice yelled at the back.

‘Shut up!’ Jenny yelled back. ‘Innocent! We’re innocent.’

‘Very well,’ said Lady Hecate. ‘In that case your accusers will present all evidence against you, and you shall rebut with any evidence in your favour.’

‘Fat chance,’ said Madame Three.

Lady Hecate held up a hand.

‘Both sides shall be heard before the defendants are declared guilty.’ She caught herself. ‘Or innocent … in the unlikely event that they
are
innocent.’

Madame Three snorted. Jenny looked at Grace.

‘Going well so far, don’t you think?’

‘And then I slipped, just inside the dining hall. It was a very painful fall, and when I looked–’

‘Was it gooey?’ Madame Three asked, peering at the witness over a pair of thin-rimmed spectacles that she had donned in order to take notes during the trial.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The substance on which you slipped, was it gooey?’

‘I …’ the girl hesitated, apparently trying to judge the look on the Supreme’s face. ‘Yes, yes, it was gooey.’

‘Mm-hmm, human goo,’ Madame Three nodded knowingly, then returned to scribbling her notes.

‘And I looked up, and they were there.’

‘I’m sorry, they?’

‘The defendants. The Dunbridge team. They were there, and I knew that it was them that had left the … gooey substance on which … on which I was to fall … on.’

‘For crying out loud,’ Jenny groaned.

‘She’s not even a Hawk Falls girl,’ Grace whispered. ‘It’s like people are just jumping on the bandwagon.’

‘With the bandwagon being driven by
that
wagon.’ Jenny glared across the aisle at Victoria’s smug smile.

‘It was a tapping sound – loud yet… yet quiet at the same time.’

The boy stammering on the stand had actually managed to work up a few tears. Grace couldn’t believe it.

‘And it obstructed your nightness?’ Madame Three asked.

‘My …’ the boy stuttered. ‘Oh, yes. Yes, it obstructed my nightness, absolutely. I haven’t slept for days.’

‘And how did you become aware that the guilty girls were to blame?’ The boy stared at her blankly. ‘Did you perhaps witness one of them, standing with their legs?’

‘Oh, yes!’ the boy said, smiling with brace-covered teeth. ‘Yes, I woke up … no, I wasn’t asleep … but I had my eyes closed, and then I opened them. And one of them was standing over my bed, banging on the wall with a … with a … they were banging with something, and I didn’t see with what they were doing the banging.’

‘It’s like listening to a lobotomised goldfish,’ Jenny said, slumping further and further onto the desk in front.

‘And which of the guilty ones was it?’ said Madame Three.

‘Umm.’ The boy’s eyes moved across the faces of Grace and her team, apparently trying to pick one at random, but having trouble making a decision. ‘Eh, that one.’

‘What?’ Adie gasped. ‘That’s not true.’

‘You’re only getting that now?’ said Jenny. ‘This here is what you call hysteria. And it’s freaking hysterical.’

The tone of the trial was, indeed, working the spectators
up into a frenzy. The more ridiculous the so-called evidence was, the more witnesses came forward. Grace had stopped objecting to individual testimonies about five witnesses in. The girls had been accused of everything, from trying to poison the dining hall food with diarrhoea-inducing super-bugs (the canteen lady had been especially colourful in her description of green-faced students sprinting to the toilets. Grace had attempted to explain that the algae mash was capable of producing that effect with no additional help, but it had not gone down well), to pulling individual hairs from the arms of unsuspecting, and terribly traumatised, rival team members. The courtroom buzzed with judgmental fever, and all the girls could hope for now was that the enthusiasm would keep the witnesses coming long enough for them to figure out a plan of escape.

Lady Hecate banged the gavel once again for order.

‘Are there any other accusers that wish to come forward?’

There were far too many
ooh, ooh,
oohs
and
me, me, mes
from the crowd behind Grace, all accompanied by eager, upheld hands.

‘In that case,’ Lady Hecate said, again using the gavel for immediate hush, ‘we will adjourn for the evening and reconvene tomorrow morning.’

There was tutting and a chorus of
awwwws
from the disappointed mass that spilled into the hallway. From what Grace could tell, there had been no Witch Trial that day – the
contest must be on hold while their own trial continued – which might explain the unwavering interest in their case. It was a good old-fashioned lynching, and the mob wanted a big finish.

The girls were led out by volunteer ‘prison guards’, students picked from the many who offered their services. Among them were one of the Raven girls, jet-black hair almost covering her beady eyes, a boy from Aura’s team (poor Aura had winced at the girls in apology when he volunteered) and a frowning, tall boy with strawberry-blond hair.

‘Gaukroger!’ Adie whispered.

Her almond-shaped eyes shone when she noticed him. But he stayed facing forward and ignored her whispers. The gentle swell of bodies soon became jostling, and the girls were wedged in the double-doorway with every person in the place eager to get a look, sneer at them, even spit at them.

‘Grace!’

Delilah’s tiny body was being swallowed in the throngs of pushing limbs. Grace snatched her hand and pulled the girl to her, holding her around the shoulders as they almost toppled into further crowds in the hallway. She looked back; Jenny was digging her way through the mob, her arm clamped around Adie’s waist, her jumper nearly stretched off one shoulder where Una held on fast. The prison guards were lost in the tumble and utterly useless.

‘Grace, a few words.’ Eder Verzerrt, short and nimble, had
wormed his way into the only space ahead. His notebook and pen trembled more than usual and he pinched his mouth to hide his smile of excitement.

‘Eder,’ Grace wheezed, ‘help us out of here.’

He pushed his milk-bottle glasses up his nose as though he hadn’t heard.

‘Just a few quick words before you’re returned to the Black Turret. Do you intend on rebutting today’s accusations? Have you indeed deceived
all
in your quest for power? And where did you gain such power? Did you purchase Wiccan knowledge from a disgruntled banished master who turned to the Dark Arts to escape the never-ending cascade of depression and loneliness, with currencies stolen from pure-hearted witches whom you killed, leaving their bodies to rot in the bogle swamps for all eternity?’