by Helen Slavin
Eight hundred yards or so and she had made no ground on the animal. It remained tantalisingly out of reach. As the bells of St Brigid’s began to toll out for midnight, the horse stepped out of sight into the darkness of the trees on the opposite side of Day’s Ride.
Charlie took one step onto the path. It felt different from the night she had come here with Emz and Anna, and she was uneasy about taking the steps necessary to follow the horse further. She stared hard. The trees thickened and closed, the air sparkled with frost. Her gut yelled that it was the wrong thing to do, and Grandma Hettie had warned them all their lives to follow their gut.
Charlie turned back through the trees and, without thinking of her actions, took a different and much swifter route back to Cob Cottage.
It was a measure of her own fears and misgivings about Havoc Wood that Anna had been driving to and from work in her old runabout. Before, the car had been parked along Keep Rows gathering leaves and occasionally rolling her out to the cash and carry at Castle Hill. Almost never had the battered and ancient little Peugeot ventured along the tarmac, gravel, and dirt drive of Cob Cottage.
As Anna left the Castle Inn, she noticed the left nearside tyre was looking a bit flat again, and so she stopped off at the garage on the way home to fill it with air.
It was a delaying tactic. Driving was a way of avoiding walking through Havoc, a commute that had previously been nothing short of lifesaving. After the loss of Calum and Ethan, Havoc Wood had been the only place she felt safe. One step over its boundaries had, if not eased the grief, at least shared the burden. Havoc Wood had taken her troubled mind over with its shadows and sunlight. It could still do that. She knew it in her heart. It was holding its breath, patient, waiting for the sisters to find it once again.
Not right now. Anna turned in at Old Castle Road, the bumping of the pocked tarmac surface lending her heart a heavy beat, which worsened as the balding tyres snaggled on the gravel and clunked into every pothole in the dirt.
Charlie’s car was already parked at the side of the cottage. There were lights on and the door was wide open. As Anna rolled up, Charlie and Emz emerged from the kitchen.
“Hey,” Anna managed a greeting. Clearly, they were as anxious to get their evening patrol over and done with as she was. “Ready for…”
“Something’s kicking off.” Charlie was forthright, her hands digging deep into her pockets, her jacket zipped up into the stand-up collar, which she hid inside.
“Kicking off?” Anna controlled the dread in her voice. Charlie lifted her head out of the collar.
“There’s a horse,” Charlie said. “Riderless.”
“A horse?” Anna felt a small wave of relief. Not a werewolf then. Was a horse anything they should fear? No. Just a horse.
“Did you ring round? Ask Carrie or Winn? They’d know whose horse is whose. Did you find where it got in? Is there a break in the…” Anna asked.
“There’s no break. It didn’t get in. It came out,” Charlie clarified, and Anna fell silent.
“It’s riderless but saddled up,” Emz said. “What do you think?”
Anna’s mind whirled like a carousel. It was populated at the moment with unicorns and Pegasus. She took in a breath.
“Saddled. Okay.”
“We’re thinking that someone fell off?” Emz suggested.
Charlie nodded. “Seems logical.”
“So… search and rescue patrol might be what we should do?” Anna felt easier. Search and rescue sounded doable, helping someone in trouble. Except, who might that someone be? Did anyone good come out of Havoc?
“This way then.” Charlie was striding ahead, tramping through the undergrowth rather than choosing an older, more worn path.
Anna struggled to keep up. Emz was overtaking her, keen and focused. Anna was already having misgivings about the horse.
“Wait. What are you doing? Where are you going?”
“This is the quickest way.”
“Quickest way? To where?”
“It headed to Day’s Ride,” Charlie yelled without looking back.
A stone settled in the pit of Anna’s stomach, as cold and blue-black as the waters of Pike Lake.
Some time later, the Way sisters paused on their side of Day’s Ride. They caught their breath, pretending to be winded so that no one had to speak or, worse, be the first to take the step across.
“You feel it?” Charlie asked.
“The horse?” Anna said, not wanting to look directly at the other feeling.
“The block.” Emz was open, observing the opposite side. “Where the trees are tangled. We can’t go there.”
Anna was not looking at the trees and the darkness, they were breathing at her.
“Anna?” Emz asked. Charlie looked at her.
“Yep. She feels it,” Anna confessed and felt instantly better. Charlie grinned.
“Can’t see the horse,” Emz said, making exaggerated head movements as she peered forward and to the side.
“No,” Charlie considered. “But this is where I followed it.”
They all fell silent for several moments, the wind cracking the few leaves left on the late November trees, the bare branches rattling like bony fingers.
“You think it’s a coincidence?” Anna asked.
“That we discover Day’s Ride and then this horse wanders out of Havoc and heads up here?”
“It’s not a coincidence,” Emz stated the fact.
Anna rallied, the exertion and the company of her sisters gave her that.
“We have to take a look,” she suggested, and, as if with one thought, they all stepped down onto the path of Day’s Ride.
“Not sure about this.” Emz shook her head, scowled at the opposite bank and its tangle of ivy and bramble. The thorns hooked into them, the ivy tangled at their feet.
“No,” Charlie said.
“Back.” Emz hopped.
“Stop,” said Anna, her jacket ripping on a whiplash of bramble.
They retraced their few steps and stood looking at the impenetrable undergrowth.
“That’s a definite no,” Charlie sighed. “Loud and very clear.”
Anna and Emz were silent.
“Let’s move. Now.” Charlie was edgy, her hands reaching for Anna’s sleeve, tugging at Emz’s black waxed raincoat. They hurried back across Day’s Ride and slipped themselves between the trees of Havoc Wood, Charlie ahead, Anna breaking into a run so as not to be left behind.
“Wait. Stop.” Emz paused to catch her breath when they had skidded and slid their way down the steep slope at the edge of Hackett. “Why are we running away?”
“Because we’re scared,” Charlie admitted.
“You saw the brambles, the thorns…” Anna’s voice was rising to a screech. She pulled at Emz’s raincoat; the black waxed fabric cracked and protested.
“Havoc Wood doesn’t work against us,” Emz insisted.
“Well, it stopped us following the horse…” The logic of this hit Charlie and Anna at once.
“It’ll have a reason.” Emz was sure. Charlie groaned.
“Oh God, it’s bound to be something dark and dangerous.” She rubbed her face as if freeing it from cobwebs of thought. “It’s not going to be the Horse of the Year Show is it?” She groaned deeper, folding over at the waist so that Anna and Emz thought she might be sick. “We won’t need a curry comb. We’ll need a pentagram and a rowan branch.” She made several more groaning noises. Her sisters regarded her for a moment.
“We need to get over to the forge at Knightstone and get some horseshoes,” Anna said with no apparent humour.
“What? To shoe the horse?” Charlie’s face was crumpled.
“For protection,” Emz reminded her. There was just a beat before they all burst into laughter. At the same time a breeze blew hard through the trees and the leaves clattered around them.
“Now I’m freaked out,” Charlie said.
And in a tight knot of uneasy laughter and thudding, he
avy footsteps, the sisters hurried back to the refuge of Cob Cottage.
On the way, they resumed their search and rescue, sticking close together as they roamed the patrol paths and checkpoints that had stood them in good stead during their visit from Mrs Fyfe in October.
“Not a sausage,” Charlie declared as, drizzled by cold rain, they pushed open the door to Cob Cottage at last.
“You think whoever it is might be hiding?” Emz threw out the suggestion and Charlie gave a deep sigh.
“Yep. So I won’t be sleeping tonight.” She pulled off her boots.
“If they’re hiding, they don’t want to be found. Maybe they aren’t injured, perhaps they’re just passing through.” Anna was trying to wring out all the positives.
“Like Mrs Fyfe was just passing through.” Charlie stood up, moved out onto the porch, wiping a hand through her mizzle-soaked hair. Anna and Emz followed.
“We don’t have to go round again?” Emz did not look enthusiastic. “Do we?”
“Mrs Fyfe got in under the wire.” Charlie looked out across Pike Lake where it was pitted with the persistent rain. “We can’t let that happen again.”
Anna shook her head.
“Take my hand.” She offered her hands eagerly.
“We’re not seven, Anna.” Charlie was over-tired and felt seven years old inside if she was being honest with herself.
“No. I know that. If we join hands, we can pool our resources, reach out.”
Charlie looked half-persuaded, and Emz took her sister’s hand, eagerly offering her own to Charlie.
“Come on…”
“What next?” Charlie took their hands with reluctance. “A bit of skipping?”
“Reach.” Anna’s voice was decisive. Charlie took in a sharp breath as their Strengths fused together with a hard rattle-like electricity. Charlie was going to close her eyes but stopped herself as the Wood blurred and halted, blurred and halted as if being shaken up.
“Reach.” Anna sent out the request once more, and it was taken up by the wind. At once, three pinpoints of light lifted into the air above them.
“Reach.” Anna’s voice was low, stretching the word out, and the lights followed, glinting fireflies that ranged out in an expanding triangle. Charlie was reminded of radar pinging back signals. She focused on her own, bright and silver, showing up the paths and tracks through the wood, the map floodlit in her head, as clear as when she was little, and her Strength was free. The scents of the wood lifted towards her.
The paths were clear, only Day’s Ride sent back an echo, as of something distant or lost.
Anna’s mind flew over the treetops picking out breath. The traces of fox and badger, the distinct places where the horse had trodden, a small silvered track of swished mane and heavy breath.
Emz stared. Fox. Badger. Horse. Saddle. Ice. The horse’s long face looking at her from Day’s Ride, a whinny close to her ear.
And here. And over here.
“Frog Pond.” Emz pulled her sisters towards the alteration, the green-weed glow that burst and then was lost. “Something definitely twitched at Frog Pond.”
It was a matter of fifteen or twenty minutes before they reached Frog Pond and it was abandoned.
“Feel anything?” Charlie asked Emz. Emz shook her head, uncertain.
“What is it?” Anna pressed her, it was clear that Emz was ill at ease.
“Don’t know.” Emz looked about; the water drew her eye. The surface was cold and still and very dark.
“Bad? Good?” Anna did not push.
“Odd. Skewed.” Emz felt off, as though she was looking out from somewhere else, watching them and afraid. At her neck, the pendant she’d made of the small silver shard Carrie had taken from the deer back in September felt cold. The leather thong it hung from felt warm. Emz was confused.
Charlie was impatient.
“Nothing specific?” She glanced around at the scene, the black rocks that bounded the pond, mossed to velvet, the bare trees overhanging, the tall rock face behind where, when the River Rade was in spate, water would cascade. Now, icicles were daggers drawn at its edge.
“No.” She couldn’t find the anomaly. The feeling intensified a little. “It’s like… hide and seek… that feeling when someone is standing right over your hiding place.”
The sisters listened. Charlie began to move around the space, kicking aside brush and stones. One rolled into the pond with a sonorous plop and the feeling vanished.
“Gone,” Emz conceded. “But whatever or whoever fell off the horse is around here. Or was. We’re on their trail.”
“This could take all night,” Charlie sighed. Anna noted the dark circles under her sister’s eyes. Beside her she saw where a switch of the nearby rowan tree had snapped off and lay at her feet.
Anna reached for the stave of rowan.
“Nope. We can leave a marker.” She stepped forward, stabbed the stave into a soft patch of mud pooling by the edge of the pond. “Whoever it is will know we are onto them.”
With no further words, the sisters moved off down the path, Charlie choosing the quickest way for them, and none of them looking back.
10
The Reach
The trees rattled like bones before Borrower understood what was coming. Ancient as an old friend, it clawed at his back, breathed on his neck so that he felt like prey. It was a three-cornered snare, a Reach unlike any that had searched through Havoc Wood in years.
It creaked with the weight of old magic, as he leapt and bound his way back to Frog Pond, borrowing, as he had of late, the particular fleeing run of the deer. Higher. Faster. Ahead of the Reach by only a footstep, slipping over the mossed stones of Frog Pond into the cold haven of its water.
Ice pricked around him for a moment, and he wondered if he was caught. No. A cracking whisper shuddered by him and down into the depths.
Three Gamekeepers, come to seek him out. He had chanced everything by stepping out of bounds and gained nothing save bruises. He recollected the pretty face and its bunched fist, the enticing, if vicious, red boots. If he survived this hunt, then might there not be further sport? Could he evade the wrath of three Gamekeepers?
He had witnessed their search of the clearing and the pond. Were they looking for him? None plunged their hand into the water to drag him out by his hair as Hettie Way had once done. None summoned him out. His heart stopped its war cry.
It was clear that while they had the Reach, they had not identified their quarry. The Reach had been thrown out, a vast net, but he was not caught.
Still, he had watched as they left the stave as their marker, clear and true in its message.
He waited until after dawn before lifting himself clear of the water, sat dripping dry on the whetstone at the pond’s darkest edge. The stave had already begun to scratch at him. He must find another way past it.
As morning rose, light filtering through the trees, Borrower looked upwards to the rock face. Ivy trailed in gnarly ropes and, by means of this and nicks and breaks in the rock, he lifted himself up and over the falls.
Change rustled at the boughs of Havoc. Hettie Way had toiled alone for years. She and Borrower’s kin had occupied Havoc as the fox and badger did, each keeping to their chosen paths.
What had shifted?
The Fyfe woman, a rogue and vagabond with her poisoned apples. The Witch Ways had dealt with her in the oldest manner. Their stave circle had made the castle sing for the first time in centuries.
Something ragged tugged at his mind, but he could not snatch at the thread of it. He stood up, slicked back his hair, and gave a wry smile. He would wait until nightfall and then, once again, follow the deer for a game of his own choosing.
11
The Ice King’s Ransom
There Is No Time
1991
The laboratory complex reminded Vanessa of a snowy landscape even in the height of summer, the white corridors drifting into white cubicles and, whiter still, the clean rooms.
“In dealing with this incident, we’ve often used the ‘needle and haystack’ analogy.” Dr Fell was not sitting in his chair. He was looking out of a window, one that offered a view of the bio lab where students in haz chem suits handled phials and flasks, a scene candlelit with Bunsen burners.
“Perhaps we can alter the analogy? This quest is rather like looking for a mammoth in a glacier.” He laughed at his own humour. “You’re no closer I take it?” His gaze towards Vanessa Way was severe. Vanessa wanted to take him to Far North and offer him up to the wolves.
“No.”
“I do suspect that even if you took a stroll through the forest at Far North every day you probably wouldn’t report it.” He was sour. Vanessa stared him down. He would not be stared.
“Your child. How old is she now? Four? Five?”
Vanessa stilled, let her breathing shallow, thought of her last days in Far North, the ritual of the runes being inked into her neck, the pain and patience, the rhythm of the tapping.
“She is nothing to do with De Quincey Langport.” Vanessa kept the shake from her voice.
“I disagree. It appears to me that the infant Alison is entirely its product.” Dr Fell stepped behind the desk, still avoiding the chair. Vanessa did not correct Dr Fell’s mistake about her daughter’s name. A childhood in Havoc had taught her the importance of keeping your name safe. Dr Fell, pleased with himself and his logic, continued.
