“Hey, Merrybutton?” Toby called. “Merrybutton? It’s us! Toby and Clarissa!”
“Is there any need to make such a fuss?” Merrybutton, Mabel’s elderly black cat, lay sphinx-like on the front step of the cottage, guarding the open door. “I could hear you coming half a mile away.”
“We weren’t trying to keep it a secret,” Toby pointed out. “I was suggesting you get some goats to help you keep the garden manageable.”
“We don’t want a manageable garden,” Merrybutton returned, her tone prim. “We’re trying to keep the riff-raff at bay.”
Toby noted fresh graffiti spray-painted on the side of the cottage and nodded in sympathy. Local hoodlums, he thought.
“And yet here you are,” said Merrybutton and, with an elegant flounce, jumped to her feet and retreated into the kitchen. “You’d better come in, I suppose. I’ll let Mabel know you’re here.”
“Is she in the cottage?” Clarissa glanced around at the mess. No worse than the last time they’d visited, to be fair.
“No.” Merrybutton chose not to elucidate, simply stared into the distance for a moment before turning her attention back to Clarissa. “It seems she was expecting you.”
That didn’t surprise Clarissa in the slightest. Mabel had an uncanny ability to know things.
“We came bearing gifts.” Toby nudged Clarissa’s leg and she nodded, hefting a canvas shopping bag. “I have some cat food for you and tins of tuna—”
“Yummy!” Toby’s stomach approved.
“Not for you, Toby! And I’ve brought some supplies for Mabel too. Should I leave them here or take them with me, Merrybutton?”
Merrybutton licked her lips. “I’m sure that’s most kind of you. Yes, take them down with you.” She sprang onto the kitchen table and took her place in a warm sunny spot. “But by all means leave my share here.”
Mabel met them on the path, an older woman, small, with a tendency to hunch over her twisted staff. She wore clothes wrought from hessian sacking material, dyed green so that she blended in with her surroundings, and painted her face with green moss and red earth. Her utility belt, hanging about her slender hips, carried a range of useful tools that clanked softly as she walked. Around her head she wore a woven headdress of braided bracken and twisted fern, prettified by summer flowers. Now, as previously, she wore her strange garb with easy comfort, and her pale green eyes shone with dazzling intelligence.
“Well met.” She stomped her wooden staff on the ground and cackled, displaying the gaps among her crooked teeth.
“Well met!” Toby greeted her, full of enthusiasm to see her again.
Her eyes sparkled as she peered down at him. “Well met, my divine lad. You’ve decided to pay another visit to Mad Mabel, have ‘ee?”
“It was Clarissa’s idea,” Toby admitted. “We brought you some biscuits to go with your tea. Shortbread!”
“We brought some beans and rice too.” Clarissa hurried along the path to catch up with Toby, her face pink with the heat. The steep climb down the roughly-hewn steps, with only the cliff on one side and the drop to the sparkling sea below, had fair taken her breath away. The views here were quite astounding if you stopped to study them for long enough. Unfortunately, Clarissa wasn’t a fan of heights, and her attention had been diverted to ensure she didn’t stumble over the edge. “I thought they might be useful for you, and healthier.” She looked pointedly at Toby who wiggled his back end at her. He’d suggested sandwiches and cake.
“Lovely, lovely,” Mabel cackled with glee. “I likes a few beans in my stews, I dos.” She made stews and dos rhyme and Toby laughed with her.
“How have you been keeping?” Clarissa asked. “Merrybutton is looking better than the last time we were here.”
“Ay-yeah. Thanks to you two. Thanks to you.” The old witch tittered merrily. “Mabel knows that.” Clarissa had sent through a little money to help tide Mabel over.
“Once we finally have the rest of Old Joe’s estate and I have my inheritance, I’ll make sure I send you some more, I promise.”
“You don’t need to worry about me. Mabel makes do. And so does Merrybutton. She’s a good mouser. None better.”
Clarissa smiled politely, but somehow she doubted the old woman’s words. If Merrybutton was as good a huntress as Mabel professed, she wouldn’t look so scrawny every time they visited.
“You worry too much.” Mabel directed her staff at Clarissa. “You should know by now that the world rights itself. There is balance in all things.”
“I’m not sure lawyers think of the world in the same way we do,” Clarissa smiled. “They like to take their time. I think if they draw everything out long enough, they get paid more. That’s what it feels like anyway. It doesn’t do a lot for my blood pressure.”
“High blood pressure?” Mabel grinned gleefully, her wide smile showing the gaps in her teeth. “I has just the thing. Come this way. Come on. Follow old Mabel.”
She pushed her way into the thick hedge to her side, disappearing quickly into the tangled green mass of gorse and bramble, hawthorn and holly bushes. Toby skipped after her easily, the going better at the foot of the hedge where wild animals made their passages, but poor Clarissa had to fight her way through, prickles snatching at her hair and t-shirt.
How did Mabel manage to get through without ripping her thin skin to shreds?
They emerged into a clearing, sheltered by the overhang of trees and tall bushes. A small circular hole at the top of the dome-shaped space allowed smoke from the ever-burning fire—built using a circle of stones to contain the wood and dried bracken fuel—to escape. Several hollowed-out tree stumps had been arranged around the fire to act as both seats and storage units. Starlings twittered in the bushes and small mammals rustled around the undergrowth. The fragrance of a dozen or more varieties of herbs tickled their noses.
Clarissa took a deep calming breath, enjoying the fresh scents floating around on a salty breeze.
“Here we be, my pretties,” Mabel sang. Her old kettle whistled away cheerfully on top of an open fire. “What you be needing is some hawthorn tea, and I has plenty of that.” She made her way to the shallow cave carved into the cliff face. Clarissa had noted before that Mabel seemed to use this area to store things and keep them dry. She had a bed inside too, little more than a thick bundle of rags and old blankets. Clarissa couldn’t imagine what it was like living out here in all weathers, especially when the wind and rain were coming in from the sea, but Mabel didn’t appear to have any complaints.
“I dries out the hawthorn and keeps it in a tin. See here?” She brandished an antique tea caddy. “My grandmother gave me this. I reckon there’s hawthorn dust in here dating back to the nineteenth century!” She cackled again. “I likes to brew it up with fresh basil, and luckily I has a bumper crop of that this summer. The weather has been practically Mediterranean.”
“It has that,” Clarissa agreed, pondering on the efficacy of hawthorn tea that might be over a hundred years old.
“Won’t be long, won’t be long,” Mabel sang. “Make yourself at home.”
Clarissa perched on a tree stump. The same one she’d chosen the last time they’d visited Mabel.
“Did your grandmother teach you about herbs?” Toby, trailing Mabel around as she prepared her brew, scrutinised her every move, carefully taking measure of the quantities she used, and sniffing the basil plants that flourished in her pots, along with sage, thyme, mint, rosemary, chive—now flowering—and coriander.
“She did, my precious. And my great-grandmother for a time too. I remember following her around the cottage garden as it was—on top of the cliffs above us, where Merrybutton holds court these days—following her, just as you’re doing to me. Holding on to her apron strings I’d be, and I’d watch as she nipped a herb here and plucked one there. She would tie them into sprigs and steep them to use in brews and cordials. A fair witch, were she. Mighty fair.”
“Do you miss her? Like I miss Old Joe?” Tob
y asked, his voice plaintive.
“I do, young man. And my dear granny and my Ma too. All of us who have ever loved, miss our dear ones when they depart for pastures new.” She bent over to stroke his ears and cup the side of his face. Her hands smelled of lavender and bergamot and the good red earth of the Devon soil. “But no-one is ever truly gone. They all walk among us. The Old Ones.”
She straightened up and fixed Clarissa with a beady eye. “Mabel knows that’s why you’ve come here today.” She nodded. “Mabel knows.”
Clarissa watched the old witch as she turned back to tend to the brew, collecting together pretty—albeit chipped and mismatched—cups and saucers to arrange on a roughly-hewn wooden tray. Mabel gave off the appearance of being not quite the full ticket perhaps, a simple creature, but her wits were as sharp as Clarissa’s. Sharper probably.
Mabel carried her load over to a tree stump and began to pour the golden liquid into a cup for Clarissa. “I can give you some of this mix to take home. It will keep your blood pressure nice and even.”
“That sounds good,” said Clarissa. “Thank you.”
“Or better yet, young Toby can brew it for you.” Mabel shot him a look. Still over by the herbs, he appeared to be taking an inventory, pushing his nose deep into each patch and inhaling the scent, then nibbling on a tip. “I have no doubt that boy is fixing to learn all my secrets.”
Clarissa snorted. “I think you’re right.”
“You need to taste the root too, Divine One,” Mabel called over to Toby, and he looked up, peering through the fronds of a coriander plant to listen to what she was telling him. “In herblore you utilise every part of the plant. You can use the leaves, or the seeds, that much is obvious, but use them in different ways. Stew them, crush them, burn them, boil them, shred them and dry them. But also the root…”
Toby began to dig into the pot in front of him.
“Toby!” Clarissa called, aghast at his forwardness.
Mabel’s cackle filled the clearing, startling the starlings. “It be fine. Let him experiment. That’s how we learn.” She wagged her thin finger in his direction. “And don’t forget to try combinations. Combining parts of the same plant prepared in different ways, or combinations of herbs and other plants and flowers. It’s all trial and error.”
“A kind of Masterchef for witches?” suggested Toby, his nose coated in damp earth.
Mabel shrugged, she had no television and had never heard of Masterchef, but Clarissa laughed, remembering her days of culinary herblore classes at Ravenswood. “Yes. Just like that.” She took a sip of the tea Mabel had prepared. It had a bitterness to it, laced with the sweet tang of basil. Interesting. “This is delicious. Thank you.”
Mabel smiled, satisfied. “’T’will help. And don’t you be a-worrying, my girl. Those lawyery-wotsits will sort themselves out. It won’t be long. You’ll see.” She tapped her nose as she said this, almost as though she had insider knowledge.
“I hope not.” Clarissa winced at the thought of how bare her bank coffers were. She needed money and she needed it soon.
Mabel slapped her thighs. “Now. Down to business.”
Clarissa tilted her head, wondering what Mabel knew and why.
“Out with it,” Mabel demanded. “Day’s-a-going-on and none of us are getting any younger.”
Clarissa jumped in. Mabel was right. No point beating around the bush.
Even if you lived in one.
“You’re a hedge witch, right?” Clarissa asked, although she knew this to be the case.
“Aye.” Mabel settled down on her own tree stump and nursed a cup of tea. She gestured at her surroundings and shrugged.
“A witch who looks like a hedge,” Toby piped up, spitting pieces of bitter thyme root from his mouth.
Clarissa leaned forward. “But you’re a true hedge witch. In its old meaning?”
Mabel’s eyes twinkled. “That’s right. In the old days they used to call us hedge riders sometimes. The name comes from a time when our foremothers would exist on the very boundaries of society—at the edge of towns and villages, where the buildings gave way to the forest—where the hedge marked the end of civilisation and the start of the unknown.”
“And a hedge rider can converse with the dead.”
Mabel wobbled her head. “There are ways and means to converse with those who have passed, and Mabel knows a few of them.”
Clarissa hesitated. “How do you do it?” she asked eventually.
“I can send my soul out.”
Toby stopped chewing and gawped at Mabel. “Your soul?”
“Don’t practise that at home, young fellow me lad.” She narrowed her eyes at Toby. He opened his mouth and closed it. Clarissa raised her eyebrows.
“But how?” Clarissa asked in wonder. She’d heard of this of course, even studied it a little at school, but the complexities of this particularly ancient—and dangerous—form of magick were quite beyond her. She was more than happy to leave it to the experts.
“It takes a great deal of training, trial and error, as all things do.” Mabel gestured at Toby among the herbs. “I had good teachers, and I can’t help thinking that much of my skill is inherited. The ability to journey between realms, to cross the veil, starts at a young age, before you understand fear.”
Clarissa nodded. Too late for me then, she decided with some relief.
“You want me to talk to Old Joe,” Mabel ventured.
“Yes.” Clarissa sighed. “I’m unsure of the direction I should be taking. He trusted me with something important and I feel like I’m failing him.”
“You haven’t failed if you’re still trying,” Mabel replied.
“And yet—”
“And yet you feel you need his guidance. That’s understandable.” Mabel lifted her cup. “Old Mabel considered Old Joe to be the brother she never had. I would be honoured to journey to the other side and bring him to you.”
Clarissa gulped, casting a quick glance around the shadows among the surrounding bushes.
Mabel unleashed her cackle. It rang through the air, scattering the starlings once more. “Not here, silly-billy. And not now. No. Mabel needs a bright moon and a sacred circle.” She beamed her toothless smile at Clarissa. “The new day will bring both.”
“A sacred circle?” Clarissa asked.
Mabel nodded and pointed at Toby. “Aye. Mabel will come to your living room on the morrow and we three will call for Joseph Silverwind by candlelight.”
Clarissa recalled the circle of symbols on the floor. She’d used them once before when she and Toby had sworn an oath to bring The Pointy Woman to justice. Since then she’d covered them up with a large, worn rug. It didn’t pay to have strangers commenting about her odd choice of décor.
“Of course.” She drained her tea. “I can come and collect you tomorrow afternoon.”
“That would be grand,” the old witch nodded. “Mabel’s getting a bit long in the tooth to be hiking around the back roads of East Devon.”
She smiled her wide, cavernous, toothless smile, but to Clarissa, the excitement in Mabel’s eyes and the flush on her leathery skin made her appear younger by a good few decades.
“I don’t like to eat before I cross.” Mabel bent over to inhale the fragrance of the chicken and vegetable stew Clarissa had been simmering all afternoon.
“Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t realise.” Clarissa popped the lid on her big stew pan and switched the ring off.
“Neither should you have.” Mabel clucked at Toby. He stood on his back legs sniffing the work surfaces, searching out traces of food. “I find it preferable that nothing interferes with the journey, and at my old age that includes my digestive system.”
Clarissa giggled. It helped to ease some of the tension that had settled into the pit of her stomach. She had taken part in a variety of séances at Ravenswood, using both Ouija boards and mediums, but she’d never been fully convinced that there had been communication with the other side. Mabel represente
d an entirely different prospect. Clearly, the old witch believed she could journey to the other side and speak to Old Joe, and that confidence was at once awe-inspiring and frightening.
After a few hours tinkering with her Winifred Breazeazy article this morning, she’d spent a good few hours preparing the room. Moving back the furniture, rolling up the rug, washing the floor and smudging the room with dry white sage. She’d arranged fresh candles in ordinary jam jars and left matches at the ready, prepared her stew, and then driven to Beer to collect Mabel just after seven.
Clarissa had been surprised to be met at the front gate of the cottage by a very different Mabel. For a start, she had changed her robes. Instead of her usual green hessian robes, she’d opted for plain black worsted serge, tied at the waist with an elaborately embroidered silk sash in midnight blue. She’d abandoned her impressive headdress too. Today her hair, clean and shining, hung in a long tidy plait down her back, the silver of the grey catching the light.
“You should eat if you want to.” Mabel indicated the bowls on the surface next to the hob.
“No, no,” Clarissa replied, politely turning down the invitation despite the fact that, having missed lunch, her stomach was growling in indignation at a lack of sustenance. “We’ll wait too, won’t we, Toby?”
“Will we?” Toby’s furry brows knitted together in alarm. “I find I can do magick better on a full stomach.”
“You won’t be doing magick,” Clarissa corrected him. “You’ll only be observing.”
“Aww, let the poor chap eat,” Mabel said. “We have a little time.”
“Hmm. Alright,” Clarissa backed down. Toby wagged his tail in delight, although he was marginally less pleased when she placed a bowl of dog food rather than a hearty stew in front of him. Maybe he’d get some leavings later.
Clarissa cleared up after herself and then joined Mabel in the lounge. The last of the sun’s rays were reaching through the bay window, bathing the room with a sparkling golden glow that warmed the usually dull walls. The wood of the floor and the fire surround came alive, flecked with chestnut and red.
Bark Side of the Moon: A Paranormal Animal Cozy Mystery (Spellbound Hound Magic and Mystery Book 3) Page 9
