But she hadn’t been there, Campion was. Mum didn’t even know I’d been hurt, because she’d sent me out of the house and told me never to come back. I think of calling home again, of telling her about the tree, about falling, to see what she’d say. Would she even stay on the line if she knew it was me?
As I climb after Campion into Waywood House, I catch sight of Cray sitting on the sofa. He takes one look at my muddy clothes and drops his notebook.
“What happened? Are you OK?”
I shake my head. “I fell out of a tree, we were picking mistletoe”
He frowns at Campiom. “You made her climb the oak tree? Did you get hurt?” he asks me.
“Not really, just scared,” I shrug off my wet and filthy jacket.
“I’ll get you some tea, I think we’ve got some of those instant heat pads as well.”
“That would be great,” I say, because my back is really starting to hurt.
Cray kisses me lightly on the mouth, making me blush as I watch him go into the kitchen.
“That, is just sickening,” Campion says, smiling like a cat, “good for you.”
“Yeah...he is,” I say, settling down on the sofa and glamouring my clothes clean and warm again.
Who needs parents when I have friends, magic and a boyfriend I can rely on?
Chapter Sixteen
It gets dark while Cray and I snuggle on the sofa drinking tea. He shows me diagrams in his notebook – signs and what he calls ‘sigils’, magical symbols that invoke different powers; the eleven star used in alchemy, runes, alchemical signs for the planets and the elements.
The others leave us alone and I’m happy about that; after the weirdness of last night’s ritual I want some time with him, to remind myself of all the good things at Waywood. Cray is definitely a good thing. Having his arm around me, so close that I can rub the soft sleeve of his hoodie between my thumb and finger is the best thing I have ever felt.
Campion taps on the door and pokes her head around. “Potion time Stone – if you can tear yourself away.”
I smile at her, gently easing away from Cray. “Time to go be a witch.”
“I’ll keep the sofa warm,” Cray says, letting me go but catching my hand at the last moment and kissing it, “be back soon.”
Campion takes my hand. “You can’t rush Ceridwen.”
“Who?” I ask, as she pulls me up the darkened stairs and onto the landing.
“Celtic goddess of prophesy, knowledge and wisdom; the crone, the old mother, Goddess of the dark mirror,” Campion says in a creepy voice, leading me to a room I’ve never been into before, which must have been the upstairs bathroom when the house was a normal house. When Campion swings open the door I see that I was right; the light from lots of candles reflects off of cracked white porcelain. The bath is full of rubble, with tealights wedged in between the chunks of concrete. The floor has patches of linoleum, but is mostly bare wood. Someone has drawn a pentacle, the five pointed star within a circle that represents the elements, on the mirror over the sink, where pillar candles have made long stalactites of wax that drip almost to the floor.
On the board floor is a circle, painted in black, the triangular images for the elements added all around it. In the centre is a camping stove with the gas turned low, a dented saucepan bubbles over the blue flame.
“Take a seat,” says Campion, “I’ve already made the potion, I’ll give you the measurements later. That’s not the important part, anyone can follow a recipe.”
“So what is the important part?”
“You have to know when and how to gather the ingredients for one, that was this morning’s lesson – if you let the mistletoe touch the ground, gather lavender when it’s not a full moon? Your potion is not going to work right. Lesson number two is to call on the power of the right deity to bless the potion.”
“Deity?”
“In this case – Ceridwen.”
Now I’m really confused. “But...you guys all said that magic came from the elements and from inside myself – that it got channelled through my chakras or whatever.”
“Good to see you were paying attention, and yeah, that’s all true.”
“But you want to ask a dark Goddess for power?” I feel my skin prickle with unease, “is that...safe?”
Campion smiles, her teeth white and gleaming in the candlelight. “Safe didn’t get us the mistletoe.”
“Campion-”
“Oh relax. The old Gods and Goddesses, they all have different faces – maidens and hunters and crones and warriors, but none of those faces is evil. They’re all part of nature.”
I still have my doubts. I’ve seen what my power can do, I believe in that, but the power of a Goddess? I try to imagine a crone, and all that comes to mind are Halloween-style witches – black cowls and long noses in withered faces, opaque eyes and extra fingers and warts. No thank you.
“Look,” Campion says, “here’s a lesson for you – there’s no such thing as ‘bad’ magic, OK? Or ‘black’ magic. No Goddess is evil, and no power from anything, even the most poisonous toadstool, is bad. Magic is like raw metal – you put in the work digging it out of the earth, melting it and purifying it and shaping it – it becomes what you make it. You can make a knife and stab someone, or you can make a pot and cook a stew to feed the hungry. It’s all about the witch. It’s not Ceridwen that’s dark; if your intentions are dark, you will call up magic and make it dark. Ceridwen is a source of power and old wisdom, she can show you things and take you to amazing places, but she is not going to make you do evil.”
I’m still not certain, but I can tell Campion is getting impatient, so I nod and follow her lead when she sits cross legged facing the pot.
“This, for the purposes of tonight, is Ceridwen’s cauldron,” Campion says, gesturing to the roiling green-brown water in the saucepan, “there’s a legend that Ceridwen had a potion brewed that would give whoever drank it wisdom and immortality – but only if they drank three drops and no more. After that it would poison them.”
That doesn’t help to calm my nerves, neither does Campion’s next move, as she produces two metal camping cups, the kind that look like mini saucepans and slot together.
“We will invoke Ceridwen and ask her blessing on this potion, that it may give us prophesy.”
“Isn’t there mistletoe in there?”
“Yes.”
“OK, even I know that’s poisonous.”
“And yet you’re still alive,” Campion says.
“What?”
“We gave you some of it at your initiation, to help you commune with the divine.”
“You drugged me?” I can’t believe it, those horrible, cold sweat inducing dreams about the pasts of the other coven members – that had been caused by some poison that they’d dosed me with?
“It’s safe,” Campion says, “the recipe is tried and tested. Sophia uses it every full moon to see the future of the coven.”
I look into the pot. If she’s telling the truth I’ve already survived the brew once, and aside from the vivid dreams, or visions, whatever they were, I’d felt OK when I woke up. That doesn’t make me any less pissed that they’d given it to me without asking. Had Cray known about that?
“You gave it to me without telling me.”
Campion looks apologetic. “We only wanted you to see things from our perspective, see how good the coven is. Besides, it’s only like smoking a bit of something, don’t tell me you’ve never done that.”
My face goes hot. “But if I have more now I’ll have had more than three drops,” I point out, “and Sophia definitely has.”
“That’s just a story, a fairytale. A little knowledge can be a powerful thing, that’s the lesson.”
Knowledge. Well, that can hardly hurt me, can it? Just knowing something, drinking a little bit of a potion that’s probably no more harmful than, say, a can of White Ace and a spliff can’t really be such a bad thing.
“OK, let’s do it then,”
I say, decisively.
“Alright, close your eyes and we’ll start the invocation, all you have to do is chant the name ‘Ceridwen’ in your mind, and I’ll do the rest.”
“OK.”
I close my eyes and begin to chant inside my mind.
“Ceridwen, keeper of the cauldron of rebirth, lady of prophesy, Goddess of wisdom and renewal, I invite you into our circle. We ask that you bless us with the gift of foresight, of primeval knowledge – As we drink, let us embrace the death of all things and the new life that follows. Let us see beyond the turning of the wheel.”
I think it’s an OK poem, but kind of a silly thing to be saying in a bathroom full of candles, over a saucepan of bubbling weeds. While Campion chants it all over again I focus on the darkness of the inside of my eyelids and chant ‘Ceridwen’. As the pinpricks of candlelight make shapes on the insides of my eyelids, I fight to clear my mind.
After a few moments I find that I can see the cauldron, a classic witchy black pot bubbling with a black brew that reflects the last sliver of the moon overhead. The image blurs and changes in detail as I lose focus and regain it, but the pot and the moon remain mostly the same.
Sitting on the wet, grassy ground, haloed in moonlit mist, is a woman in a black cloak; an old woman with a strong face and bright blue eyes. She looks sort of like my Nan, but from pictures before she got all tiny and birdlike and went mental. She looks like she’s been expecting me, like she’s sussing me out, but liking most of what she sees.
My internal chant breaks off. ‘Ceridwen?’
She smiles a small smile and lifts up her hand, which is holding one of my Nan’s teacups – cream with green flowers on it. Inside it is the same potion from Campion’s pot, green and bubbling like a witch’s cauldron in a cartoon. I reach out and take the cup, raising it to my mouth to drink.
“The berries are beautiful this time of year,” Ceridwen says, “but so many are poisonous, and they are so alike.”
Bitter liquid burns my tongue and I swallow.
I blink my eyes open and find myself staring at Campion, holding one of the metal cups in my hands, my tongue furred with leaf residue.
“You were really zoned out,” Campion says approvingly, “I already closed the circle.”
“Now what?” I ask, lightheaded.
“Now you go to sleep and see what the Goddess has to whisper to you,” Campion says, “after you’re done being disgustingly coupley with Cray in the living room.”
I manage to get up and stand in the circle, blinking and trying to make my tired eyes stay open. “I might just have to go to bed.”
Campion gets up, frowning. “If you’re sure. Are you alright?”
“Fine, just – lots of walking and climbing today. I need to go lie down. Tell Cray I’m sorry and I’ll see him tomorrow, will you?”
“’Course, oh, and take this,” she hands me the metal camping cup, “add it to your collection.”
I can’t even say thank you, I’m too tired to form any more words. Getting from the bathroom to the bedroom is hard enough, like I’m walking underwater with pockets full of stones. I cross the dark room and drop the metal cup into the shoebox I rescued from downstairs to keep my magic things in; my penknife athame, my wand, and now a cup – or chalice as Cray had called it.
I pull my sleeping bag and blankets over me and fall to sleep almost instantly.
*
I have no idea what Ceridwen wanted to show me, but as I look up at the great, rusted ferris wheel, I’m fairly certain there has been a mistake.
I am in a theme park, or a fairground, one of those travelling ones that turn up from time to time in Victoria Park – rides, rigged games and junk food. The perfect opportunity to get pissed or high and listen to loud, tinny pop music, watching the spinning lights of the carousel in the dark.
This fair doesn’t look like it travels anymore; the ferris wheel is rusted, parts of it have fallen off - a seat, a crossbeam. There are little trailers and a few wooden booths where I suppose games were supposed to be set up; Catch a duck, win a prize!, Coconut shy, Test Your Strength, China Smash, Shoot Three Targets for A Bear! Hot Dogs! Candy Floss! – but all the signs are peeling and faded. Grass is growing up against the trailers, there are no prizes to be seen and beyond the rusted helter-skelter there’s a Wurlitzer that’s blackened and charred, the painted boards behind it warped and twisted by flames.
“Here?”
I turn and see Cray frowning at the abandoned fairground. He looks so tired, there are bruise coloured smudges under his eyes and his hair desperately needs a wash.
“What?” I ask.
He seems not to hear me. “I suppose you’re right,” he says and starts walking towards the nearest wooden shack, which has ‘Candy Floss!’ painted on it in faded pink, outlined in gold.
I open my eyes to the bedroom at Waywood, feeling like an elastic band has just been snapped in my brain. What was that all about? Hardly an amazing vision of the future. My mouth tastes like stewed tea and my eyes feel all gritty. Ugh. Sitting up I realise it’s morning, the multicoloured throws tacked over the boarded windows make the light come through in oranges and blues, pinks and purples. Desperate to wash the taste of the potion out of my dry mouth, I get up, pull a blanket around my shoulders against the freezing air and hurry downstairs to find a can of Coke.
There’s no one in the lounge or the kitchen, but I can hear voices in the back garden. Through the window I spy Chronicle and Campion perched in one of the plastic chairs, Chronicle has Campion sitting across her lap and the legs of the chair are sinking slowly into the muddy ground. As I watch, Campion clasps her hands behind Chronicle’s neck and leans in, her face hidden by Chronicle’s red hair.
At least now Ilex can direct his sneers at someone other than me and Cray.
The kitchen is freezing, literally, the water in the bottles by the sink has crusts of ice floating on top. The sink itself doesn’t work, like the sink and toilet upstairs, so it’s where cans of fizz and larger are stored. I take a can of Coke, then notice that on the back of the kitchen door is my old handbag, the one I’d had with me the night I was kicked out. There’s nothing useful in it, just my house keys, my school ID and my dead phone.
An idea occurs to me. Setting aside my can I dig around in my bag for the phone. It’s just a dead piece of plastic, but I stare at the black screen and try to imagine energy crackling from the air around me, flowing through my hand and into the phone.
For a moment nothing happens, then I see the screen flicker and a second later the phone lets out a little tune to tell me it’s turning on. I have nine voicemails and fifty-seven texts. Feeling disconnected from the squat and the laughter from outside, I start to scroll through them.
Chloe: Back from the trip totally bored and need to debrief you on what happened with Nick while we were away text me back yeah?
Chloe: Fine bitch see you at school tomorrow.
Chloe: What the fuck? Kayla everyone at school says you ran away from home Tash says you never even called what’s going on?
Chloe: Kayla, we’re really worried about you do you still have your phone? Why aren’t you replying? Call me asap, OK?
Tash: Kay come home, I’m sorry alright? We all really miss you and my Mum is really pissed at me for not telling her sooner that you came over that night.
Chloe: Your parents are really worried. Kayla I’m scared can you please just call me? I won’t tell them where you are, I promise.
On, and on. Clearly they don’t know that my parents kicked me out and said I wasn’t ever to come back. They all think I’ve just run off on my own, and as for Tash! The lying bitch! She’s blatantly told Chloe that I didn’t come to see her, when she’d been the one to turn me away.
The last message is from Chloe, sent today: I don’t know if you’re out of credit or if your contract ended, but I’m going to be at the café by the Abbey with the big cookies. If you can’t reply to this message, please show up. Today, 1pm.<
br />
It’s only then that I realise it’s a Saturday; since I stopped going to school all the days have blurred together. The clock on my phone tells me that it’s currently eleven-thirty, it’ll be a push to get into town for one, with weekend buses being what they are – but not impossible. I could text her back, or call, but what would I say? How would I explain the last few weeks in a way that would make sense to her? No, I have to see her, face to face.
There’s a small part of me, a growing part, that knows I need a parachute, a safety net, an escape route. The ritual with the white stones has me spooked and my dream from the night before hasn’t helped. It was a warning, and now it’s lodged at the back of my mind. I don’t know what that fairground meant but it had felt final – like visiting a graveyard. The end.
I take my handbag and look down at my clothes, they’re OK for being at the coven, but are they OK for meeting Chloe? I try to remember what she dresses like, how I used to dress before I met Ilex and Chronicle and the others, who costume themselves like they’re plucking clothes from a magical dressing up box. Chloe likes pink and tight jeans, dolly shoes and big handbags with gold charms on them. I decide to glamour myself how I want – in a black velvet dress and heavy black boots, with a purple shawl around my shoulders (the blanket a helpful addition to my tiny wardrobe).
It feels wrong to be leaving the house by myself, I haven’t done so since I arrived. I’ve always had Cray or Nara or one of the others with me. I don’t like it, it’s like I’ve locked myself out with no coat to keep me warm, but at the same time it’s almost a relief to not have them watching me, asking what’s the matter. I get on the bus with a casual blinding hex and take a seat, looking out of the window as the fields crawl by.
Some unforeseen road works and a huge crowd of Bath Rugby fans hold the bus up a lot, and with the usual Saturday traffic to contend with I arrive at the café with only minutes to go until one. It’s a cheap café, a bit better than McDonalds but not by much, with oilcloth tables and cans of Coke in a fridge by the door. The windows are always foggy and the place constantly smells of chips.
Waywood Page 10
