Waking the Witch (The Witch of Cheyne Heath Book 1)

by W. V. Fitz-Simon

  Gosha crumpled to her knees again and sank the rest of the way to the ground, the damp grass soft and cool against her back.

  Her mother reached her, panting hard. She gripped her acorn pendant with one hand and muttered in her secret language as she laid the other on Gosha’s forehead. The heat and pressure subsided.

  “This is the problem when you do this when you’re older. The same thing happened to your cousin Renata. She broke both her ankles before they could get her to the church.”

  Gosha pressed herself up to sit.

  “What just happened?”

  “Elsie calls it transition effects. The young manage it better. Awakening to Influence all at once can kill a person. This is why you don’t see people throwing hexes at each other on the High Street. Few can withstand the change. Our family has always had the knack.”

  Her mother upended the contents of her shopping bags on the grass.

  “We have to move fast. The spell I cast to help you won’t last long. And we have to finish the Betrayal before the change becomes permanent.”

  She ripped open a package of modeling clay and thrust it into her hands.

  “Make this into a doll, a woman. Ah-ah-ah. Don’t think, just do it. Give it boobs and a cipka. A perfect likeness isn’t necessary.”

  As Gosha kneaded the clay into shape, her mother took a pair of scissors and clipped off a small lock of Gosha’s hair.

  “Press that into its head. Now give me your hand. Oh, nice manicure. Sorry I have to ruin it.” Her mother clipped off the tip of a nail from each of Gosha’s hands and retrieved them from the grass. “Press those into its hands. Do you have your period?”

  “No, not yet. Not for another day or two.”

  “Damn, that’s always the best thing. Okay, spit and snot. Put them on the doll now. I would say piss on it, too, but we don’t have enough time to get somewhere sheltered and I don’t want the police to arrest you for indecent exposure. Earwax. That’s another good one.”

  When they had put all the bodily substances that her mother could think of that wouldn’t break decency laws to harvest, her mother sat back.

  “Hold it up and turn it around so I can see it. Yes, it will do. We will make this your effigy, your substitute. It will bear the burden of your oath. But before that…”

  Her mother took Gosha’s handbag and upended it, shaking everything out on the lawn. There was a lot of junk in there, most of it the detritus of several months’ living: gum wrappers, crumbs, faded receipts, forgotten business cards. But there were useful items, too: a penknife, her makeup bag, her notebook stuffed with clippings and postcards, and her small Instamatic camera. Her big Nikkormat was still in the darkroom at the bottom of the house.

  “We need something to serve as your talisman. Pick something meaningful to you. The more meaningful, the better.”

  Everything on the grass was just an object to her. Nothing here had any significance.

  “Quick,” said her mother.

  “I don’t know.”

  “This,” her mother held her acorn pendant out for her to see, “is mine. An acorn from the oak tree at the bottom of the garden in my mother’s house. I spent all my summers underneath it reading and making dried flowers. I chose it because it reminds me of my childhood and my mother when she was still young and beautiful. That hairbrush Elsie has? That’s hers. It belonged to her sister who died when they were young. Her sister used it to brush Elsie’s hair. Is there anything like that here? What about the camera? You like to take pictures.”

  Gosha shook her head. The camera was only a year old. She rarely used it.

  “There must be something,” snapped her mother. “Come now, I can sense the Influence rising around you.”

  Gosha turned over each object, desperately trying to dredge up any positive associations, but nothing came.

  Her hand ran across the oxblood lipstick she discovered in Cressida’s drawer, and the memory of the day she bought it washed over her. She and Miranda had received their first week’s wages and taken themselves to a little boutique on Kensington Church Street where the decor was entirely black and gold, and the clothes were ripped from an Art Deco movie. Although she had dreamed of moving to London for years, she still thought of herself as the daughter of a witch from the Old Country. Even with Miranda’s coaxing, all she dared buy for herself was this single tube of lipstick.

  “This.”

  She wound out the pigment. Her mother raised her eyebrows and grimaced.

  “Not my choice of color, but its meaning to you is what’s important.”

  Gosha dabbed some on her lips, wound the stick back down and put the cover back on the tube.

  “Now, the hardest part,” said her mother. “You must catch the Influence as it rises.”

  She unwrapped her scarf from about her neck and laid it out on the grass.

  “Put the doll on this and hold the lipstick in your hand.”

  From the pile of clutter from her shopping bags on the grass, she took out a deck of cards, cracked it open, and slipped out the four aces.

  “North is that way,” she said, looking around to get her bearings, and placed the ace of diamonds on the scarf facing that direction. The other three she dealt in a cross around the doll. “This will open you to the sky.”

  She handed Gosha an ordinary number two pencil, sharpened to a point.

  “Spike it through the heart of the doll. All the way through the clay into the ground. Be firm, but don’t ruin the doll. This will ground you to the earth.”

  From the grass she took a bottle of water, birthday cake candles, and a box of matches. She poured half the bottle of water over the doll and lit four candles, passing them to Gosha.

  “Push these into its hands and feet. This connects you to fire and water.”

  From her coat pocket she took out a copy of a children’s comic: the Beano, Edmund’s favorite.

  “This is to connect you to Influence. It should be a book to represent the reach of human knowledge and ingenuity, but this was the best I could find. That or a copy of the Daily Mail.”

  She shuddered.

  “Małgorzata, the Influence will rise again. Catch it and channel it through the lipstick into the doll. It will energize the lipstick and turn it into your talisman, and it will bring life to the doll. Not real life, but as far as the Lords and Ladies are concerned it will become a representation of you.”

  It sounded impossible.

  “How do I that?”

  “I cannot tell you. If we had time, I would do more to prepare you, but we only have what we have. I will be on the bench watching. If I’m too close, it will confuse the process.”

  She reached across the makeshift altar, and cupped Gosha’s jaw in her hand.

  “This advice I can give you. Think of how you and I fight. Use the strength that drives you to stand up to me. Use the determination that allowed you to run away from home. All that courage that allowed you to hold at bay everything you are for so many years. This will see you through.”

  She leaned across the makeshift altar and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Good luck, Goga.”

  She got to her feet and hustled away, turning back once to smile and point to the bench as she ran toward it.

  This time, the Influence rose slower. It began as a lightness in her chest, an optimism that intensified into euphoria. She caught a buzz, not the easy mellow of the weed she had smoked with Johnny, but an energized thrum in her limbs. Her mind sparked, her heart jumping as it did when she was in the flow of creativity in her studio. Colors around her deepened, as if an obscuring filter had been removed from her eyes. The blue of the sky made her heart ache, and the green of the lawn spoke to her of growth and the abundance of nature.

  The surge of vitality grew and grew within her to match the force that buffeted her from without. It began like a slow tide, the rise and ebb of warm summer waters jostling her from side to side. The sensation grew until Influence pummeled her f
rom all sides with the turbulence of a mosh pit at a punk gig, the invisible force beating at her and jerking her body in a wild dance.

  As much as the outer turbulence increased, so did the sensations within her. Euphoria turned to nervous twitching, and her arms and legs convulsed. At first, she resisted, gripping her muscles tight around her bones to brace against the tremors, but the inner surge grew too great. Her body spasmed, rolling around on the grass as if she were having a seizure, her heart pounding, her lungs aching to draw breath, the battering so intense her mind went numb. Even fear became too complex and delicate. The onslaught ripped away all emotion.

  As she bucked and rolled across the grass, she glimpsed her mother on the park bench, gripping the wood as she watched. She was too far away for Gosha to make out her expression, her white hair a familiar silhouette against the backdrop of the village. She focused on the memory of those many times she sat in her mother’s kitchen, stewing as her mother alternated between lecturing and berating her, and summoned the same heat behind her eyes and the angry grip of her hands under the table, the hard clenching of her jaw that drew blood from the soft flesh of her cheeks.

  Something within her, some part of her connected to the power that overwhelmed her, responded to her thoughts and made the remembered sensation real. Anger filled her up, the anger that arose when men like Darren, the A&R man, tried to put her in her place, or when her mother lectured her as a child, telling her she was nothing and worthless.

  “STOP!”

  The onslaught grew still.

  The Influence around her recoiled from her outburst, but it gathered its strength like a wild animal ready to leap at her again.

  And leap it did, the outer and inner surges forcing themselves upon her, but this time she knew how to fight back.

  “No,” she said as she thought of the many times her mother tried to break her will.

  The Influence wrapped itself around her limbs and tensed, ready to snap her in two.

  “No,” she said as she thought of the moments of disorientation and terror as she returned to consciousness after George first used this power against her.

  The Influence pulled from without and pushed from within, trying to steal her body from her and throw her around like a crazed puppet, but she held her ground.

  “No. You serve me. I do not serve you!”

  The Influence stopped. Had it been a person, she would have sworn it had breathed in sharply in surprise. Her skin thrummed in the stillness, as if she had stepped into shelter after walking outside in the wind. The Influence rushed at her again, but not to batter and abuse her, but to flow through her and around her with the joy and excitement of a thousand braying hounds ready to do the will of their master.

  All it took was for her to think about the effigy of herself, and the power rushed from her to it, a tireless flux that connected her to the clay doll. She tasted herself with a new sense, a new part of her mind that showed her things about herself she had never known. Memories arose in her with more memories encased within, memories that peeled open further, that seemed not to be hers anymore, but perhaps were her mother’s and her grandmother’s instead.

  “The lipstick,” came a voice she recognized from far away, her mother calling out to her as she edged closer across the green. “Don’t forget the lipstick.”

  In her spasming seizures, her jerking limbs had flung the lipstick away from her. The black, shiny tube stuck out of a clod of grass nearby.

  She reached out a hand and Influence flowed through her, connecting her to the black plastic tube the way it connected her to the doll. Its shape grew in her mind. She tasted the oxblood color against her tongue and heard the gleam of shiny plastic in the sunlight. The plastic tube flew through the air into her hand.

  She aimed the end toward the doll as if it were a flashlight. Influence flowed through the tiny cylinder, taking its form, matching its qualities of color and weight, the torrent cascading out of its tip into the doll. As the flow stabilized, she, the lipstick, and the doll became one. She could stay like this for hours, for days, the flow sustaining her as it cycled through her again and again.

  A hard slap across her cheek snapped her out of her reverie.

  “That’s quite enough of that,” said her mother.

  Indignation and fury rose inside Gosha, all those years of pent up hostility between them jabbed out at this cold and angry woman.

  Her mother slapped her again.

  “Enough, girl. Don’t think I can’t still put you in your place.” She rolled her acorn between her fingers as a threat.

  Gosha came back to her senses, the grand drama of her Influence-fueled emotions receding behind the reality of the moment.

  “This is why we take the Betrayal.” Her mother helped her up off the ground. “Can you imagine coping with that every waking moment?”

  As Gosha stood, the Influence that was hers responded to the world around her. It rippled outwards and back, returning with a weight of knowledge that pressed against her brain. The thoughts of every person in the village whispered to her their every secret, their every moment of wonder.

  Her mother took her by the arm.

  “You only gave your oath to a saint.” She led Gosha across the green. “Your bastard husband gave his to a Lord. What does it say about him that he wasn’t driven mad in an instant?”

  * * *

  The church her mother led her to was a classic medieval stone building with a bell tower, a churchyard, and a cemetery set among an abundant overhang of trees.

  “All major religions are the dominion of the Sphere of Faith,” said her mother as they stood on the opposite side of the road. “Anyone who worships somewhere like this is steeped in the Influence of Faith. The old stories say it was the sixth sphere to reveal itself, after Chaos, Creation, Mystery, Abundance, and Authority.” She counted off the names on her fingers.

  “What are the others?”

  “Devotion, Will, Strength, Introspection, Fortune, Law, Desire. There’s many, many more. The big ones are always there. And other smaller ones emerge and fall away. We choose Faith because it’s the easiest to manage. You can always find a church. Whichever religion you choose, there are always rituals and practices of which to take advantage.”

  She took what remained of her shopping and dumped it in a rubbish bin.

  “We will muddy the waters, make it so Faith and Mystery cancel themselves out and you are back where you started, only much better off. Witches with their Betrayal behind them have a sensitivity to Influence and control over it, but without all the drama and obligations. And we have Craft, a sisterhood, and a tradition that goes back thousands of years.”

  “Will this break my oath to the Queen of Secrets?” Gosha didn’t like the idea of crossing the formidable woman. “That doesn’t seem wise.”

  “No, no. Not possible. The Influence of Mystery is as integral to a person as any of the Spheres. You would have to stop being human to break that kind of oath. No, It’s like… What’s that word for when you’ve changed your mind about a marriage?”

  “Divorce?”

  “No. When you’ve married but you haven’t,” she made a vague gesture bringing her two hands together, “yet.”

  Gosha’s mind went blank at first, but incomprehension soon turned to embarrassment when she realized what her mother meant. Gosha wasn’t a prude, but discussing sex with her mother was more intimacy than she cared for.

  “Annulment!”

  “Yes, that.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “Here.” Her mother produced a tablespoon from somewhere about her person. “Use it to bury the doll in the churchyard. Doesn’t have to be deep. The doll will dissolve into the ambient Influence in a matter of days. Then go inside and take communion. A mass just started. Light candles as well and pretend to pray. And cross yourself with holy water,” she mimed the action, “as you enter and as you leave. That’s an important one. It will be as if you went in and never came ou
t. All that agitation you’re experiencing will be gone.”

  The giddy thrumming in her body and the swirling force that looped about her, ready to leap at her will, nagged at her awareness. She might lose control again at any moment and be thrown down on the pavement. The self-restraint necessary to hold it at bay was exhausting.

  She did as her mother told her, choosing a spot behind a tree to shield her from the view of the road. She couldn’t shake the feeling of guilt at her transgression as she dug out a small divot of grass and earth and buried her effigy beneath it. Her fingers jittered as if she had drunk too much coffee as she worked away at the earth, Influence coiling about her hands and around everything she touched.

  In the church vestibule, she brushed off the dirt on her skirt before dipping her fingers into the holy water and crossing herself. Inside was colder than it had been on the street, the cool stillness refreshing against her charged skin.

  She had sat through masses many times before at Repton Oratory for the soothing effect on her nerves. Now she understood why it worked. She took communion and lit a candle according to her mother’s instructions. When, at last, she stepped back out into daylight, the wet coldness of holy water sharp on her forehead, the surge of sensations rattling at her since leaving the Queen of Secrets’ house was gone.

  As she stood across the street from her mother, waiting for traffic to die down so she could cross, she wrapped her fingers around the lipstick tube in her pocket. Heavier than before, it resisted movement like the gyroscope toy George had bought for Edmund that they could never get to work. Influence brushed against her skin, but it was sluggish, less responsive to her thoughts. When she let go of the lipstick, the sensation vanished.

  The Betrayal had worked. She was a witch.

  30

  It’s late afternoon and Gosha scowls at her mother’s back as her mother drones on and on in Polish about each new ingredient she stirs into the pot. Gosha bounces her knee up and down with frustration, her remedial English exercise book spread out on the coffee table in the living room. She’ll never learn proper English and not be made fun of at school if her mother insists on refusing to let her practice.