The Watching Wood (13 page)

13

Alone In The Woods

Hours later Rachel was doing her best to keep up with Aruj. It was at this point in P.E. class that she would usually fake a stitch or ask to go to the bathroom, when the sweat would break out on her top lip and threaten to streak her foundation. She was so tired she didn’t even try to keep an eye on the other Hunters that had melted into the woods around her. She wasn’t the running type, and her tightening chest and wobbly legs were begging her to stop. It didn’t help that the dense foliage blocked out most of the daylight, and she had to watch every footstep to avoid tripping over twisted roots and rambling vines.

And then she lost him entirely.

‘Fudge!’

She looked left and right and listened hard, but the sound
of his feet were lost in the weird silence of the woods.

‘Alrighty,’ she said aloud to convince herself she wasn’t scared, ‘you’re bound to run into one of them. These woods ain’t that big.’

Saying
ain’t
meant she was relaxed and casual, like a cowboy. And anything within earshot would know that. And the sun was already sinking and the forest was getting even darker. Why oh why did the Hunters always have to leave the mansion so bloody late in the day!

She took a deep breath and composed herself.

‘Gonna head this way,’ she said loudly, moving forward. ‘Ain’t nothing.’

After some distance, the sound of rushing water was welcome in the eerie quiet. Rachel sat on a rock by the stream and rested her weary legs. She blinked slowly and daydreamed of her warm bed in the yellow, silk room.

‘Bringing together.’

Her eyes shot open and her blood ran cold. There was a woman right next to her, almost touching her, kneeling by the stream, hunched over a blob of soaked linen. She roughly rubbed the linen on a flat stone, grabbed one end, flipped it over, and rubbed it again.

‘Bringing together,’ she repeated, and Rachel thought she was talking to herself.

The woman didn’t look at her; she was focussed on the washing in her hands, her black scraggly hair hanging over
scrawny shoulders. Her cheekbones were high, almost level with eye sockets that appeared to be empty, just black holes in the parched face.

‘Bring all together and take back the home.’

Rachel was frozen to the spot. If she moved at all she might touch the leathery skin and alert the woman to her presence, if she wasn’t already aware of it. All she could think to do was glamour. The bogle was still fresh in her mind and, she hoped, so unthreatening that the washer woman would ignore her completely.

In her little grey body façade, she perched on the stone, absolutely still.

‘Bring vampires and merrows and brownies and nymphs. Bring all together and take to the castle. Take to the castle and take back the home.’

‘Take back the home.’

Rachel gasped. Opposite, on a flat stone across the stream was another washer woman, the same parched skin, the same empty eye sockets.

‘Bring to the castle and take back the home.’

The women prattled on in rhythm and suddenly Rachel spied a third, further downstream, and another, and another.

‘… to the castle.’

This one was just above her, kneeling on a larger rock, so close that the spray from her linen caught the back of Rachel’s neck. They were all speaking in time together, but
with differing sentences, like a chorus of
Row, row, row your boat
.

‘Bring vampires and merrows and brownies and nymphs …’

‘Bring to the castle and take back the home …’

‘… take back the home. Bring all together and take back the home.’

‘Bring to the castle and take back the home …’

‘… vampires and merrows and brownies … and
bogles
.’

The woman in front of her had stopped washing. The leathery face was turned to her and the empty sockets stared. Rachel’s own eyes stung with tears.

Don’t move
, she heard her own voice in her head.
Focus, and don’t move
.

The others had stopped speaking. She didn’t dare look away to see if they also stared at her. The silence went on forever.

‘Bring all together,’ she finally heard from a voice downstream.

One by one, the other women joined in, until the creature in front of her finally turned her face back to her linen and carried on washing.

Light was fading on the sheet of pink salt. The girls sat, disgruntled, around the room, shivering against the cold
wind that blew through the glassless windows. In the dimness, Grace could make out the scampering silhouette of the wood nymph at Delilah’s feet.

He had eventually emerged from the birdcage after Delilah had opened the door for him, disappeared for a while, then returned to scurry about the small girl. Grace wanted him to squeeze through some opening and help them escape the turret, but he seemed only trusting of Delilah and stayed near her. He even played with her hair. To the others, he remained indifferent. In the evening light he looked like a pet rat flitting around her friend’s ankles, and it gave Grace the creeps. She thought of Jenny, and what might await her in the dungeons, and she felt instantly colder.

The pink salt in the middle of the room teased her with freedom and the chance to save her friend.
If she could just work out how to use it
.

‘No, no, get off it! You little rat, get off it!’

Grace snapped awake to the sound of Una’s voice, and looked to the middle of the room in horror. The wood nymph crouched on all fours on the sheet of paper, chomping on the scattering of rose myrrh.

‘Get off it!’ Una took a swipe at him, but missed. He squealed, darting into the corner and vanishing into a crack in the wall. ‘He’s eaten all of it!’

Grace grazed her knees scrambling over the floor and looked down at the paper. Not a single grain left. If she could
have thrown the little nymph from the window, she would have. They would never get out now. They wouldn’t save Jenny. That little creature had just devoured all their hopes. In the corner she heard Adie cry afresh and Delilah sobbing in apology. But she couldn’t comfort anyone else. It was too much, and she was too tired.

Tink tink tink tink
.

Grace had fallen asleep on Aura’s note. The paper stuck to her tear-stained face.

Tink tink tink tink
.

‘What?’ Her eyes reluctantly opened.

Tink tink tink tink
.

‘What is that?’

She rolled over. It was still dark but she could make out the little nymph, his teeth stained pink with the rose myrrh, biting at the ring on Delilah’s ankle. The small girl slept through the sound, curled on the stone floor.

Tink tink tink tink craaaack
.

‘Delilah!’

Her friend shot awake just as the ring clattered to the floor.

‘He broke it,’ Grace gasped. ‘You’re free.’

‘Good work, little guy,’ Una exclaimed, hurrying over to wriggle her finger in his face. ‘Now do mine.’

The wood nymph clamped his teeth down hard on her finger, then scurried up Delilah’s leg.

‘Owww! You little rat, I’ll–’ Una took a deep breath, plastered a big fake smile on her face, and approached him again. Another bite.

‘Ow! Delilah, make him break my binding.’

‘I’m not sure I can. I don’t think he’ll do what I say.’

He wouldn’t. Nearly half an hour of coaxing, and the nymph still wouldn’t go near any of the others.

‘This is hopeless,’ said Grace. ‘Look, we’ll just have to work with what we’ve got. Delilah’s got more spells under her belt than the rest of us put together, so this is still a pretty good result. We can work with this. I’ve got a plan.’

‘Tithon Castle,’ Alinda said, her delicate fingers turning an hors d’oeuvre on her plate.

The post-raid buffet was a standing banquet of lusciousness, and was apparently only a precursor to the celebratory sit-down dinner that would follow. Rachel was trying not to fill up on the teeny tiny pastries that were so moreish, but her scare in the woods had left her belly grumbling.

‘The castle is practically defenceless,’ Alinda continued, ‘and taking it would give the faeries a stronghold on the island. You said they planned to attack en masse?’

Rachel nodded, wiping flakes of pastry from her chin and
chewing quickly to swallow what was in her mouth.

‘Yes, I think so. They said
bring all together and take to the castle
.’ She took another pastry.

‘Then it’s certain. The gathering is for a coordinated attack, but not on the Hunters. On the Lyceum.’

‘What?’ Rachel stopped chewing. ‘My friends are there.’

‘As are many wiccan students,’ said Aruj. ‘We should have seen this coming.’

‘By ostracising the Supremes we have left them, and everyone in their care, vulnerable,’ Alinda sounded genuinely sorry. She looked firmly at Aruj. ‘It is time.’

Rachel almost gagged in her hurry to swallow the last bit of hors d’oeuvre.

‘Time for what?’

Rachel shuddered beneath the drenched image of Tormey Vause. She knew she should feel compassion for him, and all the other painted children in the gallery, but the whole room made her skin crawl. She stood behind Alinda and Aruj as they carefully pulled apart a gilded box that sat on the altar under Tormey’s portrait. A flash of movement at the other end of the room made her spin. Was that someone running? A child with black hair?

She looked to Alinda, breathless, but the woman had seen and heard nothing. Her focus was on an oval jewel in
her hands. It was large, and deep orange-red in colour, and wrapped in twists of something that looked a mixture of metal and granite.

‘Spessartine,’ Alinda said, ‘enfolded in orgonite. Older than anything you have seen or touched on Hy-Breasal, and still it shines like it is newly made.’

Aruj took the gem from her and held it up to the light.

‘What is it?’ asked Rachel.

‘Our salvation,’ the man replied.

‘Thanks to you,’ Alinda said, ‘we know all the faeries of the island will congregate in one place. And with this, we can wipe them out in one fell swoop.’

All of them?
Rachel thought of the little wood nymph from the birdcage; playful and harmless.

‘How does that work?’ she asked. ‘Is it like a bomb or something?’

‘Nothing so crass,’ Alinda’s voice darkened, and Rachel felt embarrassed for asking. ‘This charm has been infused with magic for centuries, by hundreds of witches. Hold it and you’ll feel its power.’

Aruj placed the orange stone in Rachel’s hands and the heat pulsing from it warmed her palms.

‘It was made by Hunters when they first took control of the island, and every generation has added to its store of energy. It was created as insurance.’

‘Insurance against what?’

‘Against a faery uprising, or any other disaster that could befall us. All the charm’s potential is sealed inside the stone and, when it’s needed most, can be released in one go with awesome effect.’

A
bomb
, Rachel thought again, but didn’t dare say it.

‘And it kills faeries?’

‘If you want it to.’ Alinda smiled.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The charm can be used for
anything
. Any desire, any attack, any defence, anything at all. But only once, and then its power is spent.’

‘Like a wish. You mean you just make a wish. Whatever you want.’

‘Yes, and your desire becomes reality. Even this charm could not wipe out every wretched creature on this island, but with them all in one place–’

‘We can end the faery presence here forever.’ Aruj smiled and gently took the stone from Rachel’s hands, to her immense relief. It might not have been a bomb exactly, but the charm looked and felt ready to explode. She was sweating like a cop in some film, when faced with choosing between the red wire and the blue wire.

‘Wow,’ was all she could say to the other two. Pleased enough at her reaction, they replaced the charm with the utmost care.

Later that night, tip-toeing down the grand staircase
in the hall, Rachel buttoned her long-sleeved jerkin. She froze for a moment on the final step, thinking she heard a noise. She waited. Nothing. The mansion was silent. Creeping across the floor, she pulled back the iron bolt and slunk out the door.

She trusted that Alinda and Aruj’s plan was sound, but it did mean waiting for the faeries to mass on the castle, and she couldn’t risk her friends getting hurt before the Hunters unleashed their magical nuke. She had to warn them.

The cold night air bit at her skin. It was very dark, with some little light from the moon, but the green hue that layered the island during the day was still obvious. It made the landscape in front of her look unreal. She had considered trying to fly to Tithon but she didn’t have the stamina for that kind of distance. If she were to drop out of the sky halfway and weak from the effort, she’d be done for. No, she’d have to walk it and glamour her way through the woods if need be.

She hurried through the grounds, past black and silver flowering bushes that made the place look like a graveyard, and through the small door in the massive gates. The stretch of barren land ahead didn’t worry her – she could see anything coming – but the woods beyond were dense and full of creatures she didn’t want to meet. But she had no choice: she had to go through them. To go around them would triple her journey time. Taking a deep breath, she
pulled her jerkin tighter and started walking.