A Guide for Young Wytches

by Jon Jacks

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 16

  The Ogham Script are symbols that can be carved onto your wands and talismans, or used in charms, consisting of twenty-five simple strokes branching off a central line.

  A Guide for Young Wytches

   

   

  As soon as I came out of my flashback, I realised I was freezing, far colder than the young, English witch had been.

  At least she had an overcoat.

  As for me, the cold was cutting through my blouse and undergarments. (Thankfully, in this case, the castle’s interior isn’t heated enough to allow anyone to walk around in anything but reasonably warm clothing.)

  Still, I desperately needed to get back inside the building as soon as I could. Otherwise, I would freeze to death out in the snow-swept garden.

  Glancing out over the garden once more, but this time focusing on the garden itself rather than the surrounding walls, it dawned on me that from this level the purely white sections, along with the mix of weirdly dark areas untouched by snow, made it look all the more like some sort of game board. The geometrically cut hedges, the angularly set-out borders, all added to this effect.

  A few of the snowflakes were aimlessly drifting towards the darker areas. Yet as soon as they entered these areas, the flakes vanished – as if melting.

  I wonder…

  I quickly made my way over to one of the darker areas. As I’d suspected, it was warmer here.

  Bending at my knees, I reached down to feel the ground.

  No, the warmth wasn’t coming from underneath the earth. And the ground wasn’t wet, as I’d expected, believing that the snow must be melting as soon as it touched the grass or paving stones.

  The heat came from all around me, as if from the air itself. Yet the heat wasn’t strong enough to melt the swirling snow as it fell nearby.

  Even so, it was a heat that would stop me from freezing.

  I looked back towards the castle’s keep, the central block where the castle’s main living quarters seemed to be situated. Certainly, it was where Richard’s room was, as well as my own room.

  Although the keep towered over me, it was in no way near as imposing or threatening as the looming outside walls. It possessed only a few levels and, rather than being solid, sheer walls, they were almost gracefully beautiful in the way they’d been regularly pierced with large and ornately framed windows.

  As I looked up to where I presumed my own room might possibly be, out of the corner of my eye I caught a movement in the garden. Alongside me, and yet far off. I turned to see what it might be.

  It was a dark figure, almost hidden in the darkness of the snow-free area she was forlornly walking in. Pausing, she glanced up towards the keep, seemingly looking sadly towards the windows of my own room.

  As if suddenly aware that I was watching her, she turned my way.

   She saw me, smiled: then vanished.

  It was the witch: the English witch of my flashbacks.

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 17

  Making your Own Wand: Part 3

  It is easiest to remove the bark from the wood while it is still fresh.

  Focus on your expectations of the wand.

  A Guide for Young Wytches

   

   

   

  I ran over towards the dark square of garden I’d just seen the witch standing in.

  Yes, I was fearful, wary; yet I was also curious.

  I needed to check that I hadn’t imagined seeing her.

  When I got to the square, I was disappointed; the only footsteps in the surrounding snow leading to the square were my own.

  There was no sign at all that the English witch had actually been here.

  Had it been nothing more than a mirage after all?

  An image conjured up by my imagination within the swirling patterns of snow?

  No, I don’t think it had: she had seemed all too real to me.

  Yet if it really had been her, she hadn’t aged at all since the end of the war. She still looked to be in her late teens.

  Still beautiful.

  Why would an English witch have been helping the Germans?

  Because the Germans had promised her and the other witches that their religion would have been accepted by the newly restored empire, perhaps?

  So what had happened to the plan to rescue everyone still trapped within Berlin’s bunker?

  It had failed, obviously. Berlin had fallen. Those in the bunker who hadn’t killed themselves or managed to escape became prisoners of the Russians.

  Whatever the English witch was supposed to do – and perhaps she was supposed to do it here, too, in this castle – she had thankfully failed.

   

   

  *

   

   

  I still needed a way back into the castle’s keep.

  I couldn’t see anyone at the windows.

  Perhaps if I went around to the side of the keep where Richard had his room, I might be able to attract his attention by throwing snowballs at his window.

  There certainly didn’t seem to be much hope of coming across the castle’s staff out here, considering I’d never seen anything of them while being inside the living quarters!

  The problem was that I’d have to step outside of the relative warmth of the garden, step back into the overwhelming cold of the snow-covered courtyard.

  I wouldn’t make it around to another side of the keep, let alone stay alive long enough to wait for Richard to respond to my snowballs striking his window; would he even be able to get out of bed to see who was throwing the balls towards his room?

  I looked about, seeking another solution to my problem.

  In the dark square I was standing in, there were two plinths, topped by stone vases containing shrubs carefully cut into regular cubes. I headed towards them, noticing that there was also a slab of stone running between them. It looked like the top of a small flight of steps leading to a slightly lower part of the garden.

  It wasn’t a small flight of stairs, however – it was a flight sharply descending into a brick-sided depression, ending with a door.

  ‘Daniella!’

  Although muted somewhat by the falling snow, the deadening effect of the thick layers that had already fallen, the angry cry still made me stop, made me turn around to see who was calling me.

  Another dark, lean shape was making its way through the whirling flakes – a ghostly negative – this time directly making its way towards me. As the dark wraith drew ever closer, I picked out the details informing me that it was Lisa.

  ‘Daniella: I need to talk to you! You’re really not who you say you are at all, are you?’

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 18

  To bless and protect the mother and a newly born babe, burn the needles of a Silver Fir, which is also known as the Birth Tree.

  A Guide for Young Wytches

   

   

  Unlike me, Lisa was dressed in a thick coat.

  Even so, as soon as she’d attracted my attention, she thankfully turned back towards the keep. She obviously expected me to follow.

  ‘You could die out here in this cold dressed like that!’ she stormed at me irritably, without bothering to look back and check that I was following. ‘It’s lucky for you I saw you from your bedroom window when I came looking for you!’

  I instinctively glanced up towards the windows of my room, thankful that I’d been placed in a room overlooking this weird garden.

  ‘Why do you need me?’ I asked her, echoing her irritation. ‘What do you mean, I’m not who I say I am?’

  ‘You said you stayed at the Imperia Hotel in Corfu?’

  As she said this, she ha
nded me a small tablet computer, clicking the screen on as she did so.

  It immediately opened up on a photograph of the Imperia Hotel, but one showing how it must have looked at least half a century ago. It was a picture possessing that strange sense of another era, with the style of cars parked outside, the faded colours.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ I said in reply to Lisa, realising it would be unwise to point out that I’d actually told Richard this rather than her.

  He’d obviously told her the details: had she demanded to know, or had it just come up naturally in conversation?

  ‘This is an old photo, naturally,’ I added. ‘But yes, that’s the place I stayed at.’

  As I said this, I looked at the various tabs on the screen to see if there was any way of accessing a more up-to-date picture on the website. However, it wasn’t the internet – wireless connections must be few and far between this high up in the mountains – but a saved picture.

  ‘Yes, it is an old picture, isn’t it?’ Lisa snapped back surprisingly scornfully. ‘But that’s because it was pulled down in the nineteen fifties!’

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 19

  You create a personality as a protection; but, like any protection, it can become your own imprisonment.

  A Guide for Young Wytches

   

   

  Even though I was relieved to be back at last in the warmth of the castle, I stopped on the threshold of the open door, half in, half out.

  I was shocked by Lisa’s ridiculous claim that the Imperia Hotel no longer existed.

  ‘Impossible!’ I snorted in disbelief. ‘I was staying there just a few weeks ago! Or at least, staying at a hotel that looked remarkably like this one!’

  ‘I agree with your term “impossible”; though perhaps not in the way you mean it!’

  ‘Perhaps when they say it was pulled down, they mean everything but the facade; you know – the way they build behind the old frontage?’

  ‘I don’t think much of that went on in the fifties, do you?’

  I couldn’t see her face as we were now striding down the servants’ tunnels running behind the walls, Lisa furiously storming on ahead of me.

  ‘A copy then; to recapture some of the glamour of that time?’

  ‘So, what was it like – staying in this modern hotel built to recapture the glamour of a previous age?’

  Her comment was laden with scorn.

  ‘Well…like any hotel, I suppose. What can you say? Nice rooms, attentive staff; that kind of thing.’

  I had to bite my lip to stop myself from sarcastically adding, ‘Unlike your own invisible staff.’

  I added instead, ‘Maybe this site you’ve got the photograph from has made a mistake; mixed it up with some other Imperia Hotel that was knocked down.’

  ‘I checked; that was the only one on the island.’

  ‘A hacked site: someone could have changed the details!’

  ‘Oh of course! Silly me! Hackers are renowned for breaking into historical sites, aren’t they?’

  She’d got a point; not that I was going to admit it.

  I was struggling to explain how I had managed to stay in a hotel that had supposedly been demolished.

  I knew it had to be possible because I knew I’d stayed there!

  My entire holiday couldn’t just have been a figment of my imagination!

  Unless – the English witch had something to do with all this!

  How hard would hacking into an island’s historical site be for her? For a witch who hadn’t aged since the last world war?

  And she would do all this because…?

  Answering that really beat me!

  As for blurting out that ‘An English witch is responsible for all this!’ – well, it was hardly an explanation I could use to persuade Lisa that I was telling the truth, was it?

  I needed proof: something that would prove odd things were happening around the castle.

  The book!

  The Guide for Young Wytches.

  It dawned on me that the only chance I had of persuading Lisa I was telling the truth was to present her with the book on witchcraft.

  It probably wouldn’t change its title while she held it, of course; but the increasingly complicated spells that had been gradually appearing within it might begin to make her appreciate that not everything happening in the castle was as it first seemed.

  ‘Look, I can prove something odd is happening to me, to this castle,’ I declared adamantly as we stepped out into the castle’s hallway through the disguised doorway. ‘I have a book, a really unusual book…’

   

   

  *

   

   

  Of course, Lisa didn’t see how a book – ‘Even the world’s most unusual book’ – could ever prove that I was telling the truth about my holiday in Corfu.

  Even so, I’d managed to cajole her into heading up to my room with me.

  On the way, I’d asked about the strange way the garden had warmer areas than others. She’d frowned irately as I’d asked the question, no doubt regarding it as an attempt to draw her attention away from all the questions she’d been hoping to throw at me.

  ‘It’s what they call a localised climate, I believe: the high walls of the castle funnel the winds into odd patterns. Even more so than you’d expect to find around high rise blocks in the cities.’

  I couldn’t see that it was an adequate explanation, but going by Lisa’s sour expression, it was the best I was going to get out of her.

  As soon as we entered my room, I dashed over towards the drawer contain the book. I dragged out the book from underneath my clothes, turned, and handed it straight to Lisa.

  She took it, stared at it with a wide-eyed gawp that could have been either horror or shock.

  It was, it turned out, bafflement.

  ‘A children’s book?’

  Looking up from the book in her hands, she eyed me more suspiciously than ever. She was trembling with anger.

  Now I was the one gawping at the book she held.

  The title had changed once more.

  It had changed back to A Guide for Young Wytches.

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 20

  Making your Own Wand: Part 4

  You might prefer to leave some of the bark on.

  Add the symbols now, too, while the wood is soft.

  A Guide for Young Wytches

   

   

   

  ‘I…I don’t understand!’ I stammered nervously, staring in disbelief at the book Lisa held. ‘I mean, it was a book…a book about…’

  ‘About ridiculous excuses, maybe?’

  Lisa threw the book down upon the top of the set of drawers alongside her.

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ she continued furiously, even as she whirled on the balls of her feet to leave, ‘is how you ever thought a childish book on witches was somehow going to make me believe you somehow managed to stay in a hotel pulled down half a century ago!’

  She kept up the insults, without once bothering to look back at me, as she angrily strode towards the door.

  ‘I’ve no idea what your game is young lady; but as soon as there’s a break in the weather, I want you out of here, got that?’

  It was only as she finally reached the door and irately wrenched it open that she at last turned to glance back at me.

  ‘I’m not sure how you were intending worming your evil little way into Richard’s life,’ she snarled, glowering at me as if I had somehow threatened, perhaps even endangered, both her and Richard’s life, ‘but you should know he’s not for you! He’s not what you think he is: do you understand that?’

  The door slammed behind her.

  Did she think I was only here to charm Richard out of money?

&nbs
p; Did she see me as some sort of awful gold digger?

  Or…was it that she saw me as a rival?

  A rival for Richard’s love?

  No!

  Surely not!

  That would be absolutely crazy!

  She was old enough to be…well, his grandmother, wasn’t she?

  At least, the thought made me chuckle.

  I picked up the book, wondering how or why it had changed back to its original form, its original title.

  As soon as I touched the book, I was outside of the castle once more. Outside the towers holding the drawbridge, the portcullis.

  Driving up the road towards the looming castle through the snow yet again.

   

   

  *

   

   

  The car I’m in is in a terrible state: it’s struggling to wind its way up along the rising, slightly curving road that leads to the castle’s imposing entrance.

  A uniformed man is in the front of the car, driving. I’m in the back; the English witch, arriving at the castle for the very first time.

  The car’s motor is struggling badly. The wheels screech in protest, like it’s suffering from a bent or at least damaged axle, or maybe dented hubcaps.

  From behind us, however, there’s an even heavier rattling of metal. A thundering rumble of the ground too, which makes the road tremble. It also shakes our own car, such that it rattles tinnily, ominously.

  Turning around in my seat, staring out of the muddied back window, I see an absolutely massive tank following on behind us.

  A Tiger Two; a King Tiger.

  The English witch knows which kind of tank it is.

  Gigantic, with angled sides; a truly huge gun.

  More amazingly, it seems to emanate a darkness that hangs around it like a pall of smoke. Yet it isn’t smoke, it isn’t the tank’s exhaust, or burning oil: it really is an actual darkness that it’s suffused with.

  The darkness of cruelty: of a merciless entity.

  The tank breathes, heavily, like it’s alive.

  I can sense that life, that emanation of evil. Even here, seated in the car.

  I fear it. Fear it more than anything I’ve ever feared in my life.

  And I don’t just mean I fear it: I mean the English witch – she fears it!

  I turn around in the seat once more.

  We’ve reached the twin towers containing the portcullis and drawbridge. They’re constructed on the edge of an extensive gap stretching between the road’s end and the castle itself.

  The portcullis shudders and clanks as it begins to rise. Only just a foot or so beyond it, the drawbridge still looms before us like a solid wall of wood, before it too begins to tremble and quake, gradually dropping away from us to fall neatly into place across the gap.

  The car trundles across the bridge’s heavy wooden boards.