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

by W. V. Fitz-Simon

  “Three bowls, please,” asks her mother without turning from her work.

  Outside the kitchen window, four girls Gosha recognizes from school walk by eating ice-cream cones and chatting. She watches them with longing, both for the sweet treat and for the company. If only she weren’t stuck here in her mother’s kitchen every afternoon after school, she might have a chance of making friends in their new home.

  “Małgorzata.” Her mother’s voice rises as she turns down the heat with one hand, still stirring the pot with a wooden spoon in the other. “Above the sink.” She raps the handle against the edge of the pot three times as she lifts the pot off the burner. “Quick.”

  Gosha balls her hand into fists and grimaces, sticking her tongue out at her mother behind her back and glances around to see if any of the kitchen’s many reflective surfaces might have betrayed her.

  “Careful,” her mother says as Gosha drops the bows on the counter. “The young lady is coming in twenty minutes.” Gosha pours the liquid from the pot and measures out an equal amount in each bowl. “The timing must be perfect. The potion must be fresh when she drinks it, or her husband’s seed will not bear fruit in her womb.”

  Gosha’s body has begun to change over the past few months, her chest growing larger and hair appearing in awkward places. Her mother’s endless lectures have let her know what’s coming. She’s pushed it out of her mind into that place where the other thing lives, where she won’t have to think about either of them. To hear her mother talk about seed and wombs mortifies her.

  “Help me carry them to the table.”

  The glass bowls are large and, filled with the warm liquid, surprisingly heavy.

  “How will she drink all of this?” asks Gosha.

  “Stupid girl.” Her mother clips her across the back of her head. “You haven’t been listening at all. Each bowl has a separate preparation. Take a cup from each…”

  Her mother reaches up to a high shelf on the wall above the kitchen table where she keeps the supplies Gosha dreads the most. Sure enough, her mother takes down a wooden box that contains the worst of her tools: evil figurines Gosha is convinced make faces at her when her back is turned; and transparent gems of poisonous colors that make her feel queasy when she looks into them.

  Her mother continues to lecture, but Gosha can’t take in what she’s saying. She knows what comes next, and she dreads it, the skin at the back of her neck crawling as if covered with advancing ants ready to consume her.

  She shivers and looks back out the window in the vain hope that other girls and boys from her school might walk by, but nothing comes to distract her. If she thinks about it too much, the other thing will come out of its prison and she won’t be able to turn out the light at bedtime. She resorts to her usual trick of counting the lines on the gingham tablecloth.

  Her mother takes out a figurine of a curvy woman without a head and shows it to Gosha, holding it between her index finger and thumb. She says something in her special language that Gosha recognizes is about fertility. The figurine has nipples and a cleft between its legs, and arms that are little more than giant snakes that emerge from its shoulders. Gosha is sure she sees them move as her mother drops the figurine into one of the bowls.

  The second object from the hated box is Gosha’s least favorite of all, a round piece of crystal with a jagged yellow streak through it. Gosha imagines it looks like the slitted eye of a horrific and giant creature that might lurch at you out of the dark. Her breathing tightens to short, ragged gasps as her heart pounds inside her ribcage.

  The final object that her mother takes out is a chain forged of three loops of dirty, rusty iron. This one is unfamiliar to Gosha, who thinks that she knows all the horrors in her mother’s devil box, but still, it makes her afraid. She flinches and recoils when her mother reaches it across the table so that Gosha can see it better. It reminds her of the chains in the cellar below the barn back in the village in Poland. They hung from a post next to a large and rusty iron tool she was sure the witch hunter would use on her once her mother was dead.

  The walls of the kitchen press in around her, and she struggles to breathe. She backs away from the table toward the kitchen door. If she can get outside and into the open air wafting off the ocean, she might be able to breathe again.

  “Gosha.” Her mother is angry that she is walking away. “Where are you going?”

  Gosha’s mother with her back up is never something to ignore, but Gosha is convinced if she doesn’t get outside, she’ll die.

  “Gosha, come back here.”

  She only makes it to the coat rack by the front door before her mother says one of those awful words that haunt her dreams, and she can’t move. Her arms and legs refuse to obey her, no matter how much she wants to run. To her despair, they walk her back into the kitchen. Her mother spits out another word and Gosha’s legs march her to the chair by the door and sit her down, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to breathe.

  “Sit there until the lady has left. And pay attention.”

  Her insides loosen, and a little pee leaks out. She clenches, gripping as hard as she can so she won’t soil herself as her mother drones on as if she’ll never stop.

  * * *

  “No.” Her mother threw her paper down on the garden table. “That’s not it.”

  Gosha stood on the patio, her lipstick thrumming in one hand, the other hand outstretched toward an empty flowerpot perched on a low stone wall fifty feet away. The warm feelings of connection that filled Gosha on the coach home evaporated the moment they arrived back in Alder Lane and her mother declared she would teach Gosha about Craft.

  A stab of panic in her gut threw Gosha back into her childhood skin and the endless misery of afternoons at her mother’s mercy. Memories of the dark cellar leaked into her mind, but her frustration made it easy to beat back the fear. The Influence she tried to channel at the flowerpot surged and fragmented in disarray in response to her inner turmoil. The pot cracked.

  “Lift it, don’t spatter it across the garden. Don’t ruin my petunias.”

  “Stop badgering me. How do you expect me to get it if you won’t let me try?”

  “But you’re not getting it. You’re making a mess like you always do. You don’t listen, Małgorzata. I’m trying to help you, and you won’t listen.”

  Gosha stifled a scream.

  “This isn’t working. I don’t have time. We have to stop Miranda before she goes off with that murderer.”

  Her mother stalked over to her and pushed her face uncomfortably close.

  “It has to work. You must get it now. I can’t send you off to face something worse than death with an old lipstick and half-formed ideas of what a witch should be capable.”

  “Worse than death?”

  “Oh yes. Just because these people fear what will happen if they get your blood on their hands doesn’t mean they won’t break your life into shards of misery. And if you’re to make your bastard husband pay, you will need your Craft to be without equal.”

  The wave of elation buoying Gosha up since she stepped out of the church crashed. Exhausted, she could barely hold herself up long enough to make it to one of the plastic patio chairs. For the past twenty-four hours her entire being had been focused on getting Miranda away from Emerson Margrave, the thought of George and his transformation gone from her mind. She was too good at cutting herself off from anything that might disturb her.

  “Make him pay? How will I do that?”

  “Oh, there are ways, girl. Even a saint isn’t immune to the curse of a vengeful witch.”

  Gosha buried her head in her hands.

  “Oh my god. What are you talking about?”

  “Look at me.” Her mother pulled the other plastic chair over and leaned close to take Gosha’s hands in hers. “You’re a witch now. At last, you are the same as me, your babsha, your Auntie Benedykta, and Elsie.”

  Mrs. Dearing hovered in the kitchen door with one eye on the boys as they played in
the living room.

  “This is all I wanted for you. It’s the one thing of worth I have to pass on to you. Let me do this.”

  Her mother never spoke to her with such open frankness. For all her time in her mother’s kitchen, Gosha had never grasped what it meant to be a witch. If only she hadn’t been so afraid to listen.

  “What can you teach me that I will get? There must be something simple that I can use that you can show me in less than an hour.”

  “Give her the five basics, Agnieszka,” said Mrs. Dearing.

  Her mother sat back, a puzzled expression on her face.

  “Don’t you remember your first five spells?” said Mrs. Dearing. “Don’t they do it that way in Poland?”

  “Perhaps, but that was so long ago. Mother made me take my betrayal three months after my first flow.”

  “There’s a darling little rhyme we have here.

  “A spell to bind, a spell to break,

  “A spell to find, a spell to take,

  “A final spell to use but once, when all is lost, and darkness comes.”

  “Oh yes, of course.” Gosha’s mother cocked her head to one side and bit her lip, her gaze drifting off into the distance. “In Polish, it’s not as good.”

  “Yes.” She nodded, coming back to herself, a glimmer in her eyes. “Yes, the basics that every witch needs. And I can make them foolproof, so even you can’t make a mess.”

  Her mother ushered them back into the kitchen and rummaged around in search of a pad and pen.

  “May I see your wode sump, my dear?” asked Mrs. Dearing.

  Gosha passed it over, and Mrs. Dearing dangled it in front of her to inspect it. “These are as old as Craft itself. They were the first objects of Influence anyone was able to create before the first saints tamed it and the Lords and Ladies came into being. Imagine how desperately people would have needed protection in those days.”

  “Here we are,” said Gosha’s mother, sitting down at the table. “I will give you the words to say in our tongue, one word per spell, written out phonetically. Hold your talisman, focus your thoughts to direct the spell and say the word. It’s crude, yes, but effective. Refinements can come later.”

  She scribbled as she talked, carving the words out of the paper with her heavy hand. When she finished, she held the pad to her chest to conceal what she had written.

  “Only say these words when you mean to cast the spell. You are a witch now, and your words have real power. Even if you are not holding your talisman, it might respond to you if you concentrate hard enough.”

  She began to lay the pad on the table, but pulled it away at the last moment.

  “Don’t even whisper them to yourself.”

  “I get it, Mamusha. Only say the words when I mean to cast the spell.”

  Her mother looked at her with mistrust as she placed the pad down on the table, ready to snatch it back.

  Gosha sighed.

  “I won’t say the words, I promise.”

  “How did the rhyme start, Elsie?”

  “A spell to bind and a spell to break.” At the stove, Mrs. Dearing held the wode sump above a pan of boiling water and waved her brush at it.

  “Yes, a spell to bind.” Her mother rapped the first word with the pen. “This will bring two things together and make them one. That’s not the same as sticking them together with glue, understand? No matter what they are, they become a single thing and can’t be separated again. For it to work, you must have your hand on them when you say it. It’s inconvenient, but it’s the safest way. Don’t be looking the wrong way and accidentally seal someone’s lips together. If you mean to, of course, that’s something else.”

  Gosha laughed, thinking her mother was joking, only to be appalled by the serious expression on her face.

  Her mother rapped the pen against the second word.

  “A spell to break. This will break one thing into two. And again, you must touch it. It makes a nice, clean break, no rough edges. What it does not do is reverse the effects of the binding spell, and vice versa. The Influence that powers these spells changes the fundamental nature of matter and you can’t change it back with the opposite spell.”

  “And you really don’t want to try.” Mrs. Dearing shuffled over and placed two steaming mugs of milky tea on the table in front of them. “I sealed the lid of my mother’s best china tea pot and tried to get it back off that way. I spat out china powder for three days. It took a year of hard work to pay her back.”

  She pottered back to the counter and dangled the wode sump over the pan once more.

  “What’s the next line?” asked Gosha’s mother.

  “A spell to find and a spell to take.” With hairbrush in hand, Mrs. Dearing bit the wode sump.

  “A superb rhyme,” said Gosha’s mother. “Life would have been much easier when I was a girl had I known it. Do you have any more?”

  “Oh, loads. It was the only way my mother could remember anything.”

  Gosha’s mother tapped at the third word on the pad. “This is a finding spell. Say the word as you think of whatever you want to find, and the talisman becomes a dowsing rod. It will be pulled toward it.”

  Her mother opened her mouth to say something but stopped.

  “You know, it has another use. Get me the atlas that’s in the bookcase.” She gestured toward the other room.

  As Gosha walked through the living room, she gave the boys each a kiss on the top of the head as they rolled around on the floor.

  “Errr.” Edmund wiped his head in disgust, his brother doing his best to copy him.

  “Open the atlas to Cheyne Heath.” Gosha’s mother walked over to the cupboard under the stairs and took out a canister of salt from her vast supply.

  When Gosha had done as she was told, her mother scattered a generous handful of the salt across the surface of the map.

  “Sit and hold your talisman. And think of your bastard husband. Conjure his image in as much detail as you can. Do you have it?”

  Easy enough. She wouldn’t forget the look on his face as the cast-iron skillet swung toward him.

  “Now, say the word.”

  “Sutturah.”

  The vowels and consonants felt very different in her mouth from the sensation of speaking English or Polish words. It was pleasurable to speak it, to feel the shape of its vowels in her mouth and the beat of its meter in her mind. Something within her unclenched and became fluid, creating an easy warmth in her limbs and freedom in her joints. She heard the word echoed back to her as if spoken by someone at her shoulder. She wanted to repeat it over and over, like the whispered name of a lover or a long-lost friend. Through the opening the word created in her body flowed energy that spun out through her arm, through the lipstick tube and out across the table.

  “Yes, see?” said her mother. “The word does all the work.”

  The grains of salt shifted on the map, winding across its surface like ants in formation. The trail led first to Canterbury Gardens and then along Manor Road before converging in a neat pile where Bevel Gate split off into Church Street.

  “Where is that?” asked her mother.

  “George’s office.”

  “Hm. Good, good.” She half-closed the atlas, catching the salt in the cleft of the pages and took it over to a covered rubbish bin by the kitchen door.

  “It’s only salt,” she took the lid off and poured the grains inside, “but you did use Influence on it. It’s best to dispose of your materials properly. Just in case. When we have more time, I’ll show you how.”

  She came back to the table and pulled her seat around so that she could look Gosha in the eye.

  “The first four spells are only tools. You can do damage with them, even the finding spell, but it’s damage that can be fixed with the right words. You cannot undo the other two as easily. They carry with them responsibility. This word,” she tapped the fourth one on her list with a finger, “is a curse. There are many ways to curse someone. Your babsha was a poe
t of curses. Shakespeare would have dropped to his knees in awe before her to hear her utter a malediction. This one is simple. Use the talisman like a gun. Point it at the person you want to curse. Touch them with your other hand if you can, to be certain your aim is true. As with a gun, you must be precise. This word will take from the accursed whatever they value most. It could be something physical, like an organ, or it could be their sight, or their ability to hear. The curse is of their own making. This is why I give you this word, to absolve you of making the choice.”

  The idea repulsed Gosha. The other words were simple, clinical. Even though she didn’t understand her mother’s secret language, the syllables of this word conveyed a clear threat.

  “This final word is the most serious of all. Use it only as a last resort. When the first saints tamed Influence, they created order. They imposed rules upon it. This final word negates the rules for a time. Say it and the surrounding Influence becomes wild again. It won’t last long, and the effects don’t spread far, but around you there will be chaos. Chaos is something a witch with her wits about her can take advantage of. Don’t be afraid of it. Every witch uses it at least once. I have, so has Elsie, the version in her own language. While the word has power, before Influence heals itself, nothing will work as it should. Be very careful. And you must wait a long time before you repeat it.”

  Her mother put a hand on Gosha’s shoulder to drive her point home. The syllables echoed in Gosha’s mind as she read them, reminding her of the cellar and the witch hunter. She resolved never to use the last two spells, no matter what.

  “It’s a lot to take in,” said Gosha.

  “Yes, but now you have options.”

  “I have a little present for you, too,” said Mrs. Dearing in her cheerful voice that made everything seem right. She handed Gosha back the wode sump. “The witch who created it did great work. Making these things is a lost art. Few have the skill anymore. I fiddled with it a little bit. Now it will not only absorb any Influence directed against you, but it will also feed it back into your own Craft. It won’t protect you completely, but it will give you a fighting chance. Be careful with it, dear. If it gets too full, it will become very dangerous. The more spells you cast, the better. That should keep it safe.”