Waywood

by Sarah Goodwin

  “Fuck them,” I said, in a voice not my own, kicking the books over and stepping on their glossy covers. A piece of paper was crumpled on the floor, I looked down long enough to read the words ‘suspended until further notice’ written in heavy black type. My knuckles were bloody, and I knew somehow that I’d been fighting.

  Then, just like the first time, I slipped away, sinking into the floor as if the carpet tiles were melting into a bog. I’d been in a dark, intimidating study and a man was shaking my shoulders. Looking up at his face, my brain told me I knew him, that he was my Dad, but he wasn’t. He was a stranger.

  “In my house Richard? How could you do something so disgusting in my house? With him, he’s one of the Governor’s sons for God’s sake...”

  I was scared and I could feel the tears sliding down my face, but I still shouted at him, in a voice that wasn’t mine. A voice I’d heard at Waywood that evening, Ilex’s voice.

  “He loves me!”

  I was jerked away before the man could reply.

  I’m sure the voice was Ilex’s. Remembering the other scraps of the dream, I feel cold and shivery, like I might puke any second. It was all a bit creepy, dreaming about Ilex, dreaming that I was Ilex. I’d felt what it was like to be him, and it had pretty much sucked, he’d been hurt and afraid and angry. Just how I’d felt when Mum and Dad kicked me out. The rest of the dream had also felt a bit too close to home, so many different people in my head, all of them angry, all of them trapped and miserable.

  I put the pieces together. Campion had said she’d done something to do with psychology at uni, had she been the one in my dream? The one with the suspension? Was Chronicle the helpless little girl in the bedroom that reeked of chip oil? The Harlow chippy she’d run away from?

  I shake off the idea and stand up, staggering as my dried up brain complains. I’d had a weird nightmare, that was all; unless of course someone had put something a little stronger than wine in that goblet.

  Hanging on the back of the bedroom door is a set of clothes. A black skirt cut in handkerchief layers of net, silk and velvet. The kind of goth clobber you get on market stalls up and down the country. Over it is a black cord jumper, V-neck and velvety. On the floor is a bundle that turns out to be flat soled black boots and a cheap little velvet bag, old and stained, with sparkly black beads like teardrops on it. Inside I find a plain little notebook, the colour of cardboard, with a clicky biro.

  My own clothes are sticky with sweat, and the new stuff does look much more comfortable, if a bit like it’s come from a dressing up box. Still, I have a look through my own bag, and find that everything in it is wet. Looking up, I see that there’s a slight hole in the roof and as I watch, a couple of drops of skanky water fall down onto my bag.

  I put on the clothes that they’ve left for me, happy to have something that doesn’t smell like mildew.

  Downstairs in the living room Cray and Chronicle are sitting on the sofa discussing something and going through a big, tatty book. They look up as I come in and Chronicle’s gaze is just a little too assessing for my liking.

  “She’ll do,” she says eventually. “Looks like you and White Hart were about the same size. Stone, you’re going to be out with me today.”

  I realise that she’s talking to me. That I’m Stone now, not Michaela. It feels a bit weird, but at the same time dizzily free; like I’m a balloon with a cut string, flying far away.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “Supply run,” Cray says. “Me and Nara are going to be getting some of the free stuff - herbs, dirt, things we can pick on campus, but there’s other stuff we need that we can’t just find.”

  “Like?”

  “Food,” Chronical says, with a smile, “painkillers, booze...and you know, tampons.”

  “It is so early for talk of tampons,” Ilex complains as he walks into the room, wearing black jeans and a black jumper. He looks at me, and whistles. “Look who’s queen witch.”

  I feel suddenly stupid in my get-up.

  “Shut up Ilex,” Chronicle says.

  “And mine are all wet, thanks to that hole in the roof.” I say.

  Chronicle eyes me sceptically, then sighs. “We’re heading out in a minute, get some food, quickly, and then report back to me.”

  I go into the kitchen, which I haven’t yet seen. It’s a gross little room, with ivy all over the window inside and out, black mould creeping over the walls and piles of boxes and cartons on the grungy surfaces. The sink is disgusting, clogged with bits of instant noodle and peas. I take a cereal bar from a box and go back into the living room.

  Already the squat-like, student atmosphere has changed, and I feel like I’m in some kind of barracks, as Cray and Nara take notes from the big scruffy book on the table, making a list of things they need to get.

  “What’s in the book?” I ask, just because I’m curious.

  Cray shows me lists and little tables that look like they’ve been ripped from many different books and then pasted into this one notebook.

  “It’s a load of tips and tricks, for when we’re hunting ingredients.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, like, I’m looking for dirt from a crossroads, but, the book says it can’t be a crossroads that eventually leads to a church, and it can’t be crossed by running water which is more than three hand breadths across.”

  I half laugh, “why?”

  He shrugs. “There are reasons.”

  “And why do you need this dirt?”

  Again, the shrug. “Sophia has the Grimoire, that has all the spells in it, and she tells us what ingredients she wants.”

  Chronicle appears at my side, wearing a black leather jacket over her black t-shirt and skinny jeans. It occurs to me that we’re going out to do something illegal, something that might get me into more trouble than I’m in already.

  And I really don’t care.

  *

  I’m surprised when Chronicle, after leading me out of the house and through the village to the university campus, starts walking towards the bus stop.

  “Aren’t we going to get this stuff here?” I ask.

  Chronicle raises a scarlet eyebrow. “Rule one of life at Waywood? Don’t shit where you eat.”

  We stand and wait for the bus, and, because there’s no one else around, Chronicle starts to tell me a little bit about what my life as Stone is going to be like.

  “Because you’re initiated now, we can actually do magic in front of you, and we can teach you things too. Which is useful, because it means we won’t have to look after you all the time.”

  “I don’t need looking after.”

  She laughs, not nasty, but definitely disbelieving. “Of course you do. Anyway, you’ll get lessons from all of us. Sophia will teach you a few things too, but mostly it’ll be Cray, Ilex, Nara and Campion who’ll help you out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Sophia has more important things to be getting on with.”

  She takes a small, green journal from her jacket pocket and opens it.

  “You’ve got a notebook, and that’s going to be your own little Grimoire, you can write down all these lessons in it.”

  “So what’s in the big Grimoire?”

  “The accumulated knowledge of the coven. Hundreds of books, decades of witches and Satanists and...oh, pretty much any magically inclined cult or following for the last hundred years. Things you don’t need to know right now.”

  Satanists? Great.

  “Now, pay attention,” Chronicle orders me, “this is how you’re going to be travelling from now on.”

  I want to say something smart about how I’ve been on buses before, but before I can she opens her book and shows me a picture of a stickman outlined in dots, there are rainbow coloured circles all through the centre of the man, red between his legs, right up to purple between his eyes, and white on top of his head.

  “These are chakras,” Chronicle tells me, “they’re eastern, and basically th
ey’re what controls energy flow in your body. They’re the gates that magic passes through as it comes from the earth, and through you. Of course, you have magic in you already, but, if you need more, this is how you’re going to get it.”

  Clearly she’s going to tell me a load of random gibberish. I decide to just nod and take it in. My stomach is a mess of nerves, because I know we’re probably going to be stealing, and as much as I don’t care that it’s a crime, I still don’t relish the idea of being caught. So far my only experience of theft is a little bag rummaging during break at school. Hardly the same as nicking stuff from shops.

  The bus passes us and goes to make its drop-off further up the campus, before turning and starting to come back.

  “When you get on the bus, pull a handful of power out of all those chakras, it should look black, like all those colours mixed up. Then sort of, throw it at the driver’s eyes, like you’re throwing glitter.”

  “Why?”

  “To blind him.” She caught the look on my face, and rolled her eyes. “For about a second, Jesus. Just enough time to get past him without paying.”

  The bus draws up, and I feel a jab of fear. I’m so going to get shouted at by the driver. I’m not exactly invisible, pink hair, black gothy clothes, he’s going to notice me.

  Chronicle gets on ahead of me, and I watch her fingers. For a second, no more, I think I see a kind of shadow in her cupped palm, then it’s gone. She walks onto the bus and the driver doesn’t even look at her.

  I swallow, step up and try to imagine that my hand is full of shadow. I flick my fingers at the driver, and he blinks at me.

  “Ticket to town?” he says, with a thick Polish accent.

  I try again, and he frowns at me.

  “Ticket?”

  I scrunch my fingers up hard, feeling my nails bite into my palm. I imagine power, black and fast running under my feet like an invisible stream, shooting up through my stupid ‘rainbow chakras’ like an oily geyser. It runs down into my arm, rushes around in my hand, a curling wave of power.

  I throw it at the driver, less like glitter and more like gravel, and his head actually jerks back, cracking against the window behind him. I run past him, onto the bus, and scrunch down in a seat next to Chronicle.

  The driver shakes his head to himself, closes the doors and, muttering in Polish, starts the engine and moves off.

  “Good,” Chronicle says, “a little too forceful, but, good.”

  “I didn’t do that, did I?” I ask. Had I really used magic? How could I when I didn’t even believe in it?

  “Of course you did,” Chronicle says harshly. “You can’t go around questioning your own power, it has to be a part of you, or how will you know when to use it?”

  I don’t know if I believe her, but, I take out my notebook, and write down what’s just happened, under the heading ‘Chakras and Blinding’.

  After I’m done writing, I look out of the window and watch birds flying high over the fields and train lines on the way into town. Was it really only two days since I’d left home? So much has changed, I almost don’t feel like I’ve got parents anymore.

  We get off at a stop by the supermarket, a massive Sainsbury’s, and Chronicle walks right in through the front door ahead of me while I look at the two security guards at the door and the three cameras over it, and feel my heart hitch. We are so going to get caught.

  I’m also a bit worried that someone from school might see me. I will die of embarrassment; I’ve worked so hard to look and act like Chloe but one glimpse of me in this outfit will have be branded a weirdo forever. Though, privately, the swishy layers of my skirt are starting to make me feel quite sexy.

  Chronicle has a shopping list, and that’s almost funny enough to make me stop worrying. A shopping list, for a shoplifter.

  “We’re low on cereal, powdered milk, powdered eggs, tins, dry stuff and pretty much everything in the bathroom,” she mutters, “OK, time for lesson two.” She takes a plastic bag out of her pocket, the clear kind that I usually get my weed in. Only this is full of dirt.

  “What is that?”

  “Conjuring powder.”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “You’re going to have to learn how to make it. But using it is forbidden, unless it’s to procure supplies for the entire coven.” Chronicle warns. “You can’t just go using it to get things for yourself, it’s too powerful, it would attract attention.”

  “What’s it made from then?”

  “The crossroad dirt, like what Cray is getting today, loadstone, and some other things.” Chronicle waves me off, “what you need to learn right now is how to use it.”

  She gets me to hold out my hand and pinches some of the dirt into it. It’s fine and powdery, like ash, with little bits of something white and hard in it, and black specks. Its clearly been ground down finely.

  “You put the powder on what it is that we need – like these tinned tomatoes,” Chronicle explains, and, in a well lit supermarket full of morning shoppers, she sprinkles some dirt on the very back row of tins.

  “Now what?” I ask sceptically.

  “We keep shopping.”

  It’s surreal, walking up and down the aisles where I’d been shopping with my parents less than a month before. There’s the same buy-one-get-one-free on toilet paper that was there last time, the same chirpy music over the speakers. This is where I got my first panty liners, excited and embarrassed as Mum picked them out. This is where Dad took me while I was faking sick from school back in my first year at secondary. He’d let me come with him and buy me peach iced tea and chicken Super Noodles, maybe a magazine to read since I was ‘ill’. He knew I hadn’t made any friends yet, but he never made me go when I didn’t want to.

  And here I was, with a witch. A witch myself, sprinkling magic dirt on things I had no intention of paying for.

  “Ready?” Chronicle says, as she sprinkles the last of the powder on a big box of assorted biscuits.

  “For....?”

  “Just come with me.”

  She pushes the empty trolley all the way to the back of the shop, where there’s a little alcove by the fire exit. No one even looks at us.

  “Hey!” I jump as Chronicle sprinkles dirt over my head, it tickles my neck as it makes its way into my clothes.

  “Oh hush up,” she sprinkles powder over her own head, “hold my hand.”

  I take her hand, which feels cold and dry in mine. “What are we doing?”

  “It’s a spell. You’ll have to write it down later, but just repeat after me.”

  A spell, in a supermarket. I want to roll my eyes, but there was the bus driver, before. Maybe there’s something to this magic crap.

  “Keeper of what disappears,” Chronicle begins, in a low, intense voice, “hear me now, open your ears.”

  It’s probably just a draught from the door, but I feel the hair on the back of my neck prickle.

  “Find for us now what we seek, this we will by earth air fire and sea. A gift of salt is yours, if you provide for us this day,” she squeezes my fingers, “say it.”

  I say the words, and as I do she says them along with me.

  There’s a hum in the air, like the first thudding beats of a track that’ll drag us all out onto the dance floor. It’s as if a circuit closes, there’s a crackle like static through our fingers. The world shrinks for a second and the words go round and round me, flying and mixing up until they’re just letters and sounds and our voices.

  “There,” Chronicle takes her hand from mine and pushes the trolley back into the aisle, “now we take what we need.”

  We go back to the start and Chronicle takes black plastic sacks from her bag and puts them in the trolley. We fill them as we go, taking each item that we marked with conjuring powder. She has a glass bottle of rock salt, and every time I lift down box or packet, she places a pinch of salt in its place.

  No one looks at us. People walk right by and don’t for one moment question what two teenage
girls are doing with rubbish bags full of food and bathroom supplies. We get to the door, and my heart is thundering like a speaker cranked up too high, but we pass through the doors and out into the sunlight. There’s no hand on my shoulder, no shrill alarm. The barrier between the shop and the outside world, the one you have to queue up and pay to cross, doesn’t exist for us.

  Chronicle abandons the trolley and we each take the neck of a sack in each hand, walking across the car park and back towards the bus stop.

  “How did we even get away with that?” I say, struggling to keep up with Chronicle’s strides. “That can’t have been magic. Magic isn’t...”

  “Say it’s not real, I dare you,” Chronicle swings her red hair and grins at me, “it’s on your side Stone – believe in it, and it’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

  Chapter Ten

  That afternoon, Cray finds me sitting on the windowsill of the girl’s bedroom, scribbling in my notebook.

  “Someone’s a keen student, considering she thinks magic is bullshit.”

  “Shut up,” I say, glancing at him, “like any sane person would believe in magic until they actually saw it.”

  “You did see it,” he reminds me.

  “I saw a crappy coin trick. Chronicle made us invisible in Sainsbury’s.”

  He laughs and comes over to sit with me, arranging his feet so they touch the toes of mine on the cracked and peeling sill.

  “Chronicle made a deal with the Fae in Sainsbury’s – little different.”

  “Whatever, it was wicked.”

  “You know, Chronicle told everyone that you almost knocked a bus driver unconscious.”

  I blush.

  “That’s a good thing. Well, not good, because that wasn’t the aim of the exercise, but it shows you’ve got power. Which is good.”

  “Power that I can use to dodge bus fares and steal beans?”

  He nudges my knee. “That’s just the beginning, trust me. Now that we’re getting stronger, now that we’ve got the coven in Bristol? We can start really trying to build up a life.” He leans back against the wall, “I mean, think about it, conjured furniture and a house with proper electric – we can forge all kinds of things with magic. Seriously, if I can turn a stone into a pound, why not a blanket into a feather bed? Or a bucket into a spa bath? We could have anything.”