For her part, Muriel did not much see the point of the higher primary school. She had learned to read from her mother at a very young age and had from that point on read everything put in front of her. She learned of wars and queens and kings. She learned geometry and higher math and philosophy. She lost herself in the sordid and gory stories of the saints and martyrs and learned the Latin names of plants and animals from the crumbling books in her grandmother Moira’s library. But her real education was spent on the heath. As soon as she could slip away and change the stiff, scratchy school uniform for soft cotton, she headed to the fields that surrounded the city. It was here she discovered that by sitting very still under the great rowan tree by the edge of the woods and emptying her head, she could call the butterflies to land on her shoulders and hands. She discovered that storm clouds manifested when she was in a foul mood and cleared as she unwound her unhappiness.
She knew the neighbors whispered about her and sometimes appeared in the shop with gawking eyes and shy questions. A young woman once approached Muriel as she ground peppermint and wormwood at the shop’s work table, and in a tumble of words explained that she was getting married on Saturday next and could Muriel maybe make her a charm to keep the rain at bay and storm clouds clear. Muriel had kindly explained that it doesn’t quite work that way, but at the teary eyes of the young woman, she mixed a small bag of allspice, cinnamon, and mint. The woman thanked her profusely and overpaid for the simple mixture by far. Muriel didn’t guarantee a rain-free day, but at the very least the mixture would smell pleasant and bring luck to whomever kept it close.
It was on the day of the wedding when the storm broke. It started as a rain-free and entirely cloudless day. Muriel was pleased that the bride with her bag of sweet-smelling herbs wouldn’t have to suffer the weather and was more pleased that she wouldn’t have to hear about it later on when said bride came to complain. As she walked through the field toward the shelter of a large rowan tree, she spied movement from the base on the soft mossy ground. Startled, Muriel stopped and observed. A boy a bit older than she was leaning up against the trunk as though he were waiting. She had never seen anyone out in the fields the way she was; there were others, of course, the farmers who made their way back and forth to the city, and the children who rolled and played in the rough grass. But Muriel was typically the only one content to spend hours sitting under a tree or get lost in her head collecting wildflowers and the herbs that grew at the edge of the woods. But here was another, and in the spot that she frequented most. Suddenly she began to feel the electricity in the air prickling at her fingertips.
Muriel turned to leave, her skin tingling in warning. As she moved, the boy heard the rustle in the rough grass and stood. He was tall, taller than she’d thought, and older. He grinned, but even from a bit of a distance Muriel could see that it was the sort of smile that lived on his lips only, a smile meant to fool others. He waved and took a step forward. Muriel regarded him for a moment, spun, and headed back to the city gate. She heard footsteps moving faster behind her, catching up to her quickly. All the hairs on her back and neck on end, Muriel quickly weighed her options. To her left, the forest was closer than the city gate. She knew the forest as well as she knew her own home; there were a dozen places to hide where no one would ever find her. If she ran to the gates to the right, she risked being overtaken, and on this fair, cloudless day, no one was around to see what was happening.
Ice traveled up Muriel’s back into her heart. More footsteps sounded behind her. Dreading the sight, she swiveled as she ran and saw three other boys—no, not boys, men—in step with the first. Where had they come from, she wondered silently. They must have been hiding by the edge of the woods, waiting for the first to make a move. What did they want? She broke into a run as she heard the steps behind her quickening their pace. A pelt of laughter broke from behind her.
“C’mon, little witch!” they jeered. “We only want to talk to ya.”
Muriel judged the distance to the city gates; no one was around, no one could hear her scream or cry out. The woods to her left were closer; she could make it to the woods, and once there she could lead them to where hunters laid their sharp-clawed traps. She knew the spot well, as usually she went and sprung them when no one was about; today, though, she knew they were set, and with a bit of misdirection, the men who were still calling after her and pacing into a run themselves would be caught in the mire of blades and snapping jaws. With a breath, she steeled her will and veered to the left, the alder and elm trees greeting her into their secluded darkness.
“Little witch!” the men called after her. “Little witch, are you hiding?”
Muriel dodged the ancient trunks and waited to see if they would follow. She knew the path that would take them to the traps. Her question was answered with the snapping of branches and leaves as the men entered the woods after her.
“You know witching’s a crime, don’t you?” a voice called, an edge to the words. “We’re only here to warn you what happens to abominations like yourself.”
Muriel ducked and ran down the familiar path, the footsteps behind her gaining speed. Of course they know the woods, she thought wildly. They might even be the ones who set the traps. Still she blundered on, the voices behind her getting louder and louder.
“Clever girl. We know where you’re leading us. You don’t really think we’ll go traipsing through our own traps, now, do ya?”
Muriel stopped. Her chest heaving, she ducked behind the trunk of a giant elm, hoping the undergrowth and ferns were enough to mask her. The footsteps steadily approached. The men were laughing.
“We’re not tryin’ to fleg you, little one, but we think that maybe no one’s told you that witchin’s a crime. You know what they did to witches back in the day?”
Muriel was shaking, her breath ragged. The crunch of the leaves and bramble came closer, closer, closer. All of a sudden, she had a clear picture in her head of the man who had been sitting under the tree. He had been at her mother’s shop several weeks back, staring in the window. Mum had shivered as though suddenly chilled and stared him back down until he moved and walked down the street. She hadn’t spoken of it then or since, and Muriel had not seen the man again until today.
“It’s the devil’s work, little witch.” A voice boomed so close that Muriel had to stifle a scream. “We know all about your mother and grandmother, and they might have charmed the authorities, but God doesn’t give a feck about all that.”
The crunching of leaves and twigs stopped, and Muriel held her breath. Then she felt a sharp stab of pain as her head was yanked backward by the hair and she was dragged out from behind the elm. A scream that sailed through the treetops escaped her lips, but the men only laughed.
“C’mon, little witch, none of that.”
A length of stinking cloth was stuffed in her mouth as two of the laughing men pinned down her arms and legs to the forest floor. Muriel could hear the crack of storm clouds overhead and feel the rain that had burst from the sky filtering through the trees. Lightning streaked across the sky, and the rowan tree burst into flames.
“What’d we tell you about witchin’?” the smiling man asked as he undid his belt.
Far off in the lowland crags, the black water of the underground lake stirred and sent cascading ripples to lap the rocky shore. The Cailleach awakened with a start. A storm was raging, and the stifled screams of her many-greats granddaughter filled her ears. With a cry that shook the walls of the cave and sent a ripple across the rough grass of the heath, the Cailleach lurched to the entrance of her cave, her movements savage and deliberate. The air hit her withered skin for the first time in a thousand years. She raised her arms to the sky and summoned the wind and rain; she felt in the darkness for the hidden terrors, those that had lain dormant alongside her for a thousand long years. Many miles away, the men were knocked from their feet by a blast of arctic air, bits of ice and hail like razors cutting into their skin, piercing their eyes and blinding
them. They screamed in pain and surprise. Lightning shot from the sky, splintering the elm and sending dancing bits of flame to light among the forest. The men were reduced to a series of parts, all their ugliness and hate now a severed leg or bodiless elbow, a bit of an ear and a tangle of intestine. The ensuing fire would consume most, and what was left went to the badgers and wildcats.
Muriel crawled from the blaze through the storm of ice and rain, her body aching and bloody. She had no tears left and instead was filled with a rage that overtook her entirely. Raising herself to all fours, she placed her hands on the ground and channeled all the horror in her body and mind into the earth. The ley lines quivered and shook, channeling the curse under the earth and straight under the city walls. In that moment, Muriel had no regard for anyone; no one was innocent. They came to her for herbs, and then they descried her for a witch. She fell back shaking as the rain subsided and the fire simmered to a low burn. The curse sent by the many-greats granddaughter of Cailleach crept into the shadows and alleyways of Glasgow; it infected the water and caught the twilight breeze, blowing into the windows of the young and old alike.
The first fell ill almost immediately, coughing to raise the blood from the lungs. Hundred upon hundreds followed. They died slowly, their own lungs deteriorating bit by bit, their bodies wracked with pain and terror. The curse did not discriminate, and the young died alongside the grown ones. As the forest still burned, as the curse was being spread and the first of so many fell ill, the Cailleach lurched back to her nest by the shores of the black lake, deep within her cave, and folded back into herself. She felt the vibration of the ley lines and the power of the young hag. She also felt the inevitability of what was to come.
The child was born nine months to the date of the great storm. The curse still swirled around the city, and no one understood why Muriel or her mother seemed unconcerned about the baby catching the consumption that was killing so many. Both Muriel and Catriona knew this child was immune to such human blights, evil as her conception was. The line of hags from which she descended assured that she was to be extraordinary. She was named Rowan, after the patch of beauty and comfort on the fields that had been destroyed forever. The hags of Glasgow closed around her and taught her the secrets of their kind, and the Cailleach settled back into her sleep deep within the lowland crags.
COIRA ANNE COSLET. Alice was filling out the paperwork that would create a birth certificate and eventually a passport for the tiny, perfect creature that was currently sleeping in her cot. Born on the longest night of the year, when the new- shorn summer had not yet begun to warm in the English sun. Paul hadn’t understood why Alice was so set on the name; he had wanted to look at the baby book, and he had suggested Karen or maybe Susan. Alice had turned him down flat. There was a slew of family names to choose from, and Alice had carefully considered the long line of women from whence she had come. She nearly decided upon Catherine, or even the older spelling, Catriona, but ultimately decided upon a name she had found scrawled into the pages of the family Bible, a many-times ancient grandmother. Alice liked the sound of it, the smooth sea rocks that washed up on the Scottish shore. Paul had been baffled. In his family, names were chosen because they sounded nice; not nearly so much consideration to the history of the name was given. Alice knew better: names held power. It would be up to the wee little baby with the pink cheeks and honey-fire eyes to pass on another carefully chosen family name.
“What if it’d been a boy?” Paul had asked, his face scrunched up in bafflement as he slowly accepted the way things would be.
“Then he would be Arthur after my brother, but that would change nothing. The tradition follows the first-born daughter; she will inherit all the things from the old country.” Alice tried to be patient. Paul had shaken his head, not understanding. His family might still have a foothold in their old Welsh ways, but they had been in the states far longer than Alice’s. They had forgotten the power of names and tradition.
In her cot, Coira started to fuss, and Alice looked up, startled. She was due for a nappy change. The fresh ones were still on the line at the back of the house. A service stopped by every other day, but they never seemed to keep up with the demand. They left a stack of fresh cloth squares, and they’d cart the dirty away. But Alice felt bad sending them with the stink and mess, so she washed them in the utility sink out back and hung them up on the line, her baby in a basket next to her in the grassy yard, cooing at the ivory flags flying in the English breeze. Alice had taken a semi-permanent leave from the International School. They’d offered her a full year’s leave, but she hadn’t made any indication that she intended to return. They seemed somewhat unconcerned.
Mum and Polly were due the week after next; they were all going to take a train up to Glasgow with Coira, see the old house in Cathedral Court that still belonged to their line and had a caretaker hired by Mum. The girl’s school that had occupied its halls for so long had closed years ago, and now the caretaker, with Mum’s blessing, rented out the rooms to boarders. The little stone cottage far on the end of the land surrounding the manor house, where Grandmum Rowan and Granddad had lived, where they had sought shelter during the war, still stood, housing the caretaker. The little shop on High Street that Alice held so dear to her childhood was now a bakery and teashop. Alice tingled with excitement at the thought of the trip. Her memories of her childhood were fragmented, a bit from the country house, a bit from High Street. Alice’s heart ached when she thought of Gran; she remembered her long, silver braid curling over her shoulder and her tea that tasted slightly of vanilla. She’d been six the last time she’d seen her in the flesh, but that hadn’t been goodbye. Alice never told Mum, but Gran had visited her nearly every night since her passing.
She’d been in Caracas when Gran had passed. Alice had known immediately. She was teaching, in the middle of a lesson, and a wave had hit her. She stepped back and steadied herself on the chalkboard, smearing the notes her students were struggling to copy down. There was no explaining how she knew; it was as though a piece of her had been ripped away—a lung, a heart, a bit of her very soul. Tears were already streaming down her cheeks when she ran out of the room and to the front desk clerk. They assumed that she had received a phone call, or the grief was just sneaking up on her. No one had questioned her when she ran home to the tiny apartment she shared with Lupe. She was met by her neighbor, an older man who smoked pungent cigars and often brought over bottles of rum to share. “You have a visitor,” he had said. “I would have been happy to entertain her if I’d known.” Alice had shaken her head, and the man had looked confused. “She was right out on your balcony earlier. Nice looking lady—your grandmother? Dressed a bit warm for the weather.”
Alice had shaken her well-meaning neighbor off and found herself on the balcony, her entire body aching with the loss. It had been Gran on the balcony; Alice could see her clear as day now, standing tall with her black knit sweater and long skirt. Her silver braid, an entity in itself, catching the dying sun. She had come to say goodbye, and never again would Alice hear her scratchy voice over the phone or read a new letter in her hawkish script.
But soon enough, Alice would be able to set wildflowers at the gravesite where she lay with others of her line in the Necropolis, and walk down the lane where she had so long ago played as a child. Her own infant Coira would look at the same sky that her namesake had, and it all seemed as though it were coming full circle. None of the rest of it mattered. The pain it had taken to get her here was washed away. Alice crossed to the fussy baby and lifted her in her arms, singing softly to her.
Through the world I am wandering, wandering
These are the days I live now
Through the world I am wandering, wandering
A soft breeze blowing
In these soft moments time stopped, and Alice knew that the planets were aligning at last. The vision she had been given so many years ago back on the lane in Glasgow was slipping into sync, and the world was falling into pla
ce at long last.
IN THIS WAY TIME passed, and Coira grew from infant to toddler to little girl. She was stoic and serious, her honey-fire eyes taking in everything that went on around her. Life went on as it did. Great stretches of time passed before Paul would turn up at Miss Lettie’s, but he always brought books and toys for Coira. The pair of them would sit together while Paul sang the little girl songs from a crumbling book of nursery rhymes.
There was an old lady who swallowed a fly
I don’t know why she swallowed a fly
I guess she’ll die
The child, barely out of toddlerhood, would listen as though she were being read a legal document: she studied the words and offered no smile or giggle as a sign of approval. Alice watched the two of them and saw a flash of why she had forgiven Paul so very much: he was patient and kind, and never once did he question why the little girl was unlike others of her age. She’s smarter than most everyone else, he said once after Coira had fallen asleep and they’d gently placed her in the cot in Alice’s room. Alice had just nodded. She was smarter than the lot of those around her, and everything that happened was absorbed in her honey-fire eyes and processed silently behind her unreadable face.
Time passed. Miss Lettie watched the little girl as Alice went back to teaching. She said she felt as though she were a grandmum again. Alice felt she could continue this life forever if it were granted, but it was not to be. She had seen a great many things on that day as a child on High Street, and she knew that the path that had been laid out so many years ago would come to pass. She shivered at the images that had been shown to her, some clear and some nonsensical and chilling.
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