An Obstinate Witch

by E M Graham

  ‘Edinburgh just wouldn’t work for our purposes. There are too many Kin in that grand city, I’m afraid.’

  ‘And there’s not in Inverness?’ I was sceptical, yes, for I remembered my sole night there bitterly.

  ‘Some, yes,’ she said, considering. ‘But none we really have to worry about. And we have the protection of the Fae on Tomnahurich. They are not enamoured of the witches, it is an uneasy Accord, at best.’

  ‘They’ll give you permission to enter the fairy hill because...’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The Fae can be invaluable allies, remember this.’

  I sat back for a bit to take all this information in. She watched me the whole while with a fond smile.

  ‘What will we do tonight?’ I had to know. I had already failed spectacularly once that night. ‘What is the... the ceremony that will enable me to go to the Ice King’s court?’

  She darted a glance at Fergie sleeping soundly next to me, and then the goblin who by this time had curled up like a cat on the floor with his eyes closed. ‘You will see, when the time draws near.’

  After another moment, I asked her. ‘Why is the goblin coming with us?’

  ‘He offered,’ she said. ‘And you’ll need him. He has the nose to guide you through the maze, and time is of the essence. You only have a very small window of time during the height of the full moon. He’ll help you save time.’

  She would give me no further information. This talk of the enemies of the Kin was making me uncomfortable, so instead I focused on my position of power in holding the Chronicle. I removed it from my satchel, conscious of Meg sitting next to me in the motor carriage. She didn’t move, didn’t speak when it was in my lap. Hardly daring to breathe at my boldness, I caressed the leather bonding for a moment, feeling the warm power pulse and hum like a motor idling, waiting to jump into action. It whispered to me, this book, but I couldn’t catch the words no matter how hard I listened, they were always just at the end of my perception. So I opened it, feeling Meg’s body start at the presumption.

  I could hardly believe my eyes. The pages were blank. I quickly flipped the heavy linen sheets, but every single one of them was as pure as when they were first created. Not a scratch, not a scribble, not even a doodle as she whiled away the many years. The sheets glowed white in the dark.

  ‘What is this?’ I turned to her.

  She sidled her eyes at me and gave a small smile. ‘Did you think I would actually allow just anyone to read my words?’

  Well, yes, that had been my assumption at the beginning. I would take her book, and read the spell within to get to the Ice Kingdom and back. She must have seen my disappointment.

  She laughed. It was a tinkle of genuine amusement, no anger or bitterness tinging it. ‘It’s not a grimoire,’ she pointed out. ‘It’s a Chronicle, telling all I know and will know, as per the Kin’s curse.’

  ‘But there’s nothing written in it. Every single page is blank.’

  ‘To your eyes,’ she said. ‘And to the Kin’s eyes, and anyone else who reads it without my permission.’

  Her face hardened and the corner of her top lip drew up in bitterness. ‘They can sentence me to dwell underground, they can curse me to write all I know into my Chronicle, but I’m still Margaret Forsythe. I am the most powerful of them all.’

  We were passing alongside a long lake, flat and glittering and bright in the moonlight. She stared out the window and continued, her voice quietly dripping with venom. ‘He thought he could contain me with his silly curses, when it was I who gave him all the power he has. I have waited long years for this moment. At last! You and I will finish what I started so long ago. Before the end of this night, the Kin will know the anger of Margaret Forsythe.’

  A thrill of sheer terror ran up my spine and I looked down at the Chronicle in my lap, useless to me now. I’d thought I could control Auld Meg, but I realized I had irrevocably choked off my future. This angry witch could not be contained. I could only close my eyes and pray to the God I didn’t believe in that not too much blood would be shed.

  18

  THE AUTOMOBILE TURNED OFF the main highway and in through a stone pillared entrance, the iron gates rusted and hanging askew. The lane was overgrown with grass and tree branches scraped along the car’s body. This road had not been used for a very long time.

  Yet in the near distance I could see rolling fields of lawn.

  ‘A golf course,’ Margaret spit. ‘They’ve turned the entire grounds into a playground for commoners.’

  Then the driver took a left turn, deeper into the overgrown woods and I felt us passing through an unseen barrier, a force field of some nature. I tasted the air, yes it was a magical portal. We soon drew up before a single turreted tower, the spire reaching barely past the pines and beeches and briars surrounding it like something out of a fairy tale. I recognized it from the flash of Margaret’s memories earlier that night, when I’d first touched the Chronicle.

  ‘What is this place?’ The pale stones glowed ghostly in the moonlight.

  ‘This,’ Margaret said proudly. ‘This is my insurance which my dearest Papa left in place, as he promised he would. Now, I must take a moment to change out of this outfit and collect some items. I can’t present myself to Aonghas in this manner, whatever would he think?’ With that she made her way through the bushes and disappeared into the tower.

  I poked Fergie with my elbow to wake her up. She stretched and yawned, then opened her eyes to see the goblin sitting down at her feet, quickly wolfing down a bag of chips, or as he called it, a packet of crisps, that he hadn’t offered to share. Crumbs were flying.

  ‘Oh dear God,’ she muttered. ‘I thought that was a dream.’

  From the shadows of the footwell, he grinned sourly at her, baring all his teeth.

  ‘Gross!’ Fergie turned her face away from the sight. She was bleary eyed and sober now. ‘And who is that woman again? I thought I knew all the Kin, but I’ve never met her before, and she’s a feckin’ powerful witch.’

  I climbed out of the car to stretch my legs and stall for time. Fergie jumped out after me, staring up at the stone tower which now had lights in three of its windows.

  I drew a breath to explain the whole events so far, but Trevor beat me to it.

  ‘Oh stop your gabbling,’ Trevor broke in before I could begin to tactfully tell the story. ‘That’s Auld Meg, that’s who she is, and we freed her from her curse and Dara needs your help or otherwise, believe me, she would never have dragooned you into this.’ He gave a sniff and climbed out of the vehicle. ‘Scraping the bottom of the barrel, if you ask me.’

  ‘I don’t believe I did ask you, goblin,’ Fergie sneered. Then his words finally sank in, and she turned to me, a look of horror written dawning on her face. ‘Auld Meg? That was Auld Meg? Are you kiddin’ me? What the feck, Dara? You mean I was just in a car with...’ She turned to look at the old fashioned vehicle with the driver grey and still behind the wheel.

  ‘Where the hell are we?’ She was screeching now. ‘What’s going on? You didn’t tell me the whole story, did you?’

  ‘Some friend you’re turning out to be,’ Trevor bit back at her as he pranced ahead of us in his red heeled boots. ‘Besides, it’s too late to back out now. You’ve been seen in public with the witch. Once the Kin realize what have happened, they’ll know you were involved, and so you might as well play along. In for a penny, in for a pound, as they say.’

  I pushed the goblin out of the way and filled Fergie in as we made our way to an old stone bench. But it all may have been information overload for my poor hung-over friend. She seized on one thing, ignoring the whole ‘cursed witch‘ bit for the sake of her own sanity.

  ‘The Ice Kingdom? How are we getting there?’ she stopped and asked, each individual freckle on her face stood out in stark relief. ‘And more to the point, how we getting back?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know al
l the details, but you have to trust me on this one,’ I pleaded with her. ‘I’m sorry to have involved you, but I don’t know any other witches in Edinburgh except I knew you were there, and it’s actually serendipitous, don’t you think?’

  ‘Seren-feckin-dipitous, my arse! I bet your precious Hugh doesn’t know about this, does he? No way you’d get him involved although he’s a better witch than me, but he wouldn’t want to besmirch his high-up position within the Kin, huh?’

  ‘Like I said, we were scraping the bottom of the barrel,’ Trevor muttered.

  ‘How could you mix me up in this?’ Fergie screeched as she stood her ground ‘I don’t understand you Dara Martin. How could you ever think I’d be okay with this?’

  ‘I didn’t. I didn’t think. It’s just that...’

  I had no more words. The surge of energy from the moon’s tide was at its heights, yet I felt drained. My life was crashing all round me, yet again. New place, new country, but here I was, getting involved in something way over my head that I had no control over. Again. Why hadn’t the Kin just bound my magic when they had a chance, back at Christmas time? I would now be happily attending plumbing school, and preparing for Alice’s wedding, having a nice normal relationship with Jack perhaps, totally ignorant of curses and witches and Scarp and the Ice Kingdom.... and Mom.

  And Hugh. I didn’t even want to go there with my thoughts. After this escapade, I think even he might give up on me. Allowing Auld Meg to escape her dungeon could not be a forgivable offense in the eyes of the Kin. They had put her in the Vaults for a reason.

  But... what was the reason? What had she done that was so awful? The legends didn’t say, just that she had done a terrible thing and so was banished from the Kin. ‘Please?’ I wasn’t used to begging. ‘I really need you. This... I can’t explain how much this means to me.’

  She stared at me with flint-like eyes. ‘Your mother, who you thought was dead, is in the Ice Kingdom and can’t get out on her own?’

  I nodded.

  ‘And in order to rescue her, you and the goblin disrupted a curse laid by the Kin more than a hundred years ago, and freed Auld Meg.’

  I nodded again. So far, she was correct. ‘Although, I didn’t realize at the time...’ Fergie cut me off with a sharp shake of her head.

  ‘Don’t give me that. I don’t want to hear excuses.’ She took a deep breath and continued. ‘So. Auld Meg is able to help you get to the Ice Kingdom to find your mother.’

  ‘She has the information in her Chronicle. I was just going to take that, but apparently she has to come with it.’

  ‘Auld Meg’s Chronicle. Dear Lord.’ She gave a low whistle. ‘So we’ve been driven across the country by a Bodach, with Auld Meg, who has been unleashed from the curse it took a dozen Kin to put on her. And which you freed her from. Tell me again, how did you free her?’

  ‘I took the book out of the Vaults,’ I said. ‘She had to come with it.’

  ‘And it didn’t burn you? When you touched it?’ She was whispering in awe.

  ‘No, should it have?’

  Fergie shrugged. ‘I think so, unless the Kin made that part up.’

  We walked on a bit further, under the trees and away from Trevor’s smelly presence, but he lingered close. Fergie was quiet now. I knew that look on her face. She was thinking hard, weighing the pros and cons of our situations. I began to relax. We sat on the lichen covered bench Fergie nodded slowly.

  ‘Alright,’ she said. ‘I don’t see that I have much choice, much as I hate to admit the goblin was right.’

  Trevor fingered his red scarf and pointedly ignored her.

  ‘But...’ she said. ‘Where are we again?’

  ‘Somewhere near Inverness,’ I said. ‘We’re going to Tomnahurich.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Fergie continued. ‘The Fae. And Auld Meg - I don’t understand how she isn’t old and wrinkly. She’s more than a hundred years old, isn’t she? How come she’s so gorgeous? It wasn’t a glamour she’d put on, I’m pretty good at spotting them. This was her real self.’

  ‘The Stone,’ Trevor muttered impatiently. ‘It’s the effects of the Stone, of course, you dimwit.’

  ‘But Dara touched the Stone, too,’ Fergie rounded on him. ‘So...’

  He turned to face her with a sneer. ‘Click, click, see the wheels turning. The brain is a little rusty, but what else would you expect from a Hedge Witch?’

  She looked at me with new respect in her eyes, and perhaps a little fear. ‘Really? Christ.’

  I shrugged uncomfortably. ‘Only when the moon is full, or getting there,’ I mumbled. ‘Other than that, I’m not changed.’

  She let out a huge sigh. ‘So that’s why you were in Edinburgh, so they could keep an eye on you.’

  ‘Yeah. Guess so.’

  ‘How did you manage to give them the slip then? Why didn’t they know you were going in to Auld Meg’s dungeon?’

  I’d been so caught up in the events, I hadn’t thought to ask myself that. And there was also that crystal ball in Nachtan’s room, like a closed circuit camera aimed at Meg. What of that?

  ‘Well, I’m not so sure we did,’ I admitted. ‘Cromwell’s forces were after me tonight.’

  ‘The Uncommon Forces?’ This was whispered. ‘So, what? We’re on the run, you mean?’

  I could only nod.

  MARGARET CAME OUT OF THE TOWER looking like a new woman, as if she’d spent hours at a spa or at least a haute couture place. Her fresh outfit had been the height of fashion in the years before the Great War, her ankles saucily displayed beneath her narrow skirt and her hair, too, had been tamed and was newly shined, the auburn waves tidy under her smart hat. She carried an old-fashioned carpet bag at her side.

  On her breast was pinned a brooch in the shape of a dragon-fly, the bejewelled glass set in copper, twinkling even in the faint lights from the doorway.

  More to the point, she was followed by a maid servant of a species much like the driver, the Bodach, who carried a laden silver tray. The aroma of coffee and fresh baked pastries called through the night air like a siren.

  ‘Just a quick bite to restore us all,’ Margaret said as she poured the thin silver cups from the tray. ‘We’re going to need our strength.’

  She gave us only the time needed to wolf down the repast before bundling us back into the vehicle. She kept her carpet bag in her lap.

  ‘Bodach, on to Tomnahurich!’

  SOON, THE OLD CAR TOOK US through the streets of Inverness. I could see the castle looming ahead of us, but before we reached it we turned off and went over a bridge. A huge lump of a hill reached towards the sky on our right. As the car drove around the base of this and turned off the main road and on to a dark gravelled road, I became aware of the pressing need to pee, fueled by the delicious coffee we’d just had.

  We rolled to a stop at the end of this lane beneath a wide canopy of trees.

  Margaret was the first to exit the vehicle, her eyes shining as she looked up, up at the darkness looming. Bag in hand, she began to stride up a path.

  ‘Wait!’ I called out to her, which made her pause as if she’d forgotten she had companions. We all climbed out of the car. ‘I really need to...’ I nodded towards the bushes to my left.

  She sighed impatiently and looked all around us. ‘Quick then,’ she said. ‘We need to get under Aonghas’s protection.’

  ‘Do you think the Kin have followed us all the way here?’

  She gave a short laugh. ‘Oh, yes, that is guaranteed. We’ll start, you can catch up.’ She turned her back on me and beckoning the others to follow, started at a more sedate pace along the path.

  I jumped into a break in the hedge and relieved myself, thankful for the darkness. It wasn’t the first time I’d peed in bushes, but that was back home where you sometimes had no choice in the rough barrens and back country. This however, was civilized Scotland, and it felt wrong somehow, even though there were no people around to know. B
ut just as I was refastening my jeans, something rustled at my side. I looked up, and Hugh was standing before me.

  ‘What...?’

  He put his finger to his lips.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Damn damn damn. After we’d been so careful, how did he follow us? We had been careful, hadn’t we?

  And what did his presence here mean? Everything was ruined. We wouldn’t be able to save Mom tonight after all, not with Mister Interfering Kin Hugh here. And with that realization came another. My stomach sank further, if that was at all possible.

  He must know about Auld Meg.

  And he was furious, I could tell by the set of his shoulders and his narrowed eyes, and the way he loomed over me. He’d followed us up here to Inverness just to give me a right bollocking, as Fergie would say.

  ‘Do you know what you’ve done?’ The words were barely making it out of his mouth, his lips were in such a grim line, but he kept his voice low. ‘What the hell? I turn my back on you for a moment, and look at you!’

  ‘What?’ I decided to brazen it out. ‘I just came up here to Inverness, needed a holiday...’

  I looked at him carefully, to see if there was a chance he’d believe me, but then he moved. Quickly. I found myself with his hand clapped over my mouth and being dragged physically off to the main path.

  ‘Cut the shit, Dara! You’ve freed the most dangerous criminal in all of Kin history,’ he hissed in my ear. ‘Now just come quietly with me.’

  Okay, so he knew. But that was no excuse for treating me this way. I struggled yet was no physical match against the strength of his grip. His anger was like a black cloud enveloping us both but my outrage was a flash of lightning striking out blindly yet with accuracy on my target. I still have no idea how I did it, it must have been the power of the Stone and the full moon but without thinking I lashed out at him, throwing him a full ten feet until he landed on the nearest hard surface. In this case, a wooden fence, which was now leaning at an angle after his body smashed into it.