Darkwells

by R. A Humphry

  Thoughts of Henry led to thoughts about his strange quiet friend. Manu was a mass of contradictions for Heather. He looked so exotic and yet behaved like the stiffest English gentleman from a bad Hollywood film. He was rugged and handsome and built in proportions that she knew would make many of her girlfriends narrow their eyes in predatory fashion and break out the shortest of their little black dresses. Yet it would be in vain as Heather knew that the only thing that frightened Manu was when pretty girls talked to him. He had nearly had a heart attack when Kim chatted to him in the King Arthur. Such a puzzle. He looked like a foreign film star and yet when he spoke he sounded, if anything, like he was more posh than Henry.

  There was something so quaint about him. He always held the door open for Heather and would never start eating until she had. He stood when she entered a room and the only times she saw him get angry were when someone was doing something thoughtless or wrong that hurt others. It saddened her to see how wounded he was when he got the news from Harrington.

  Yet Manu was also a threat to her, she conceded. Or at least he might become so. He could hear her, she admitted to herself. She had also noticed how his golden aura was starting to manifest when she was around. It was a disturbing thought and she pushed it away, unwilling to face the conclusions. He knows.

  She had started to hear the whispering in the dark few hours after they returned from meeting the Raven-Master. Heather had been distraught. Everything that had been opened up to her - the freedom from fear, the wonderful new life - had been snatched away by the dusty old man. New fears crowded with the old. The sense of oppression was multiplied as she imagined the Valravens watching her every move. She had wept through the night, her body exhausting itself with the heaving sobs.

  It was in the middle of that dark night, as she snivelled and cried like a mourning child, that the whispers first arrived.

  “Hush now,” they called in a grating voice that rasped like the wind through the desert. “They are not worth a single tear.”

  Heather had sat bolt upright in panic, her covers pulled up tight to her chest. “Hello?” she called out.

  “They are just the sad ruins of a once mighty people. Impotent, self important and deluded - much like the empire that they supported. I’d not worry about them.”

  Heather cast Trithemius. Nothing revealed itself other than the empty walls of her narrow room.

  “Don’t bother, my dear. You won’t find me that way. I’m all in your head, after all. Calm yourself. You’ve not gone mad. You don’t realise how powerful you are, do you? Your distress has been blaring out like a foghorn. It is good that I have come, as I find you woefully untrained.” The voice paused for a second and Heather took some deep, frightened breaths. “He tries, but he is only half-trained himself, you know. No amount of genius can change that. It makes it worse, in fact, as he tries things he should leave alone. You know that. I can show you things though, if you let me. Things that the carrion-birds can never take from you. Things you will never find in those dusty old pages.”

  Henry’s many warnings on supernatural beings flashed into Heather’s mind. “Never trust them with anything. Never make any bargains. Never believe them when they say that something is a gift.”

  Heather swallowed and spoke into the darkness. “What do you want? Why are you helping me?”

  The voice laughed. It was a hacking, horrible sound that reminded her of dust and thirst. “Oh but I help myself, little one. How else will I ever sleep with your wailing? I’ll let you in on a secret first. The carrion-eaters hate women. They always have. Burn the witches! Oh, how they loved doing that. They hate women and they hate magic. It is so dirty for them, so unruly. They love order. They adore this modern world full of machines. This world where no one person is ever enough to change anything, to be anything bigger than a little cog. That is what they accomplished, after all, isn’t it? The domestication of all that was once wild, once free. I can hide you from them. You and the boy.”

  “And your price?”

  “Oh, no price. I will watch your progress. Such a terror you could become! The things you could do and undo. Oh, that shall be payment enough.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Isn’t it obvious Heather?” the voice asked with a tinge of mockery. “I am you. Or at least, you are me. I was once the frightened little girl cowering in a too large world. I was once an avalanche of potential as you are.”

  “How can I trust you?”

  “Trust me? Oh dear me, no. Might as well trust a faerie. That boy has truly taught you nothing,” the voice sighed and it sounded like a thousand dying gasps. “I force you to do nothing. You summoned me with your wailing, even if you don’t know how. But I tire of this. I wish to help you to spite that army of fools, will you let me or should I depart?”

  Heather hesitated for the barest second. “Yes, please help.”

  The whisper was unpredictable. Days would pass without the barest hint that it was there, only for Heather to be startled when it would deluge her with advice. Much of it was magic related and occurred as she sat at Henry’s mother’s desk at Hawksworth, but a lot of it was bizarrely mundane and without reason.

  “Don’t wear anything purple during the second quarter of the waxing moon,” it advised her as she slipped her favourite scrunchy on her arm. Startled, she had taken it off.

  “Always pass the Hawthorn trees on the right hand side.”

  “Chase that cat! Chase it!”

  Heather began to wonder if the voice was magical or whether she was just going crazy. The argument for her being insane had a lot going for it. The magic, for one, was not ‘normal’. Nor was her friendship with Henry, who could quite easily be a deranged invention of her mind.

  Manu, however, was solid and real. It was his presence that brought it home to her. When he saw how he seemed to pick up the whispers she knew that it was not just in her head. When he started to glow she knew that this was a strong magical presence.

  She thought of it as her faerie godmother, despite all of Henry’s dire warnings about the mortal danger that faeries posed. One thing that couldn’t be denied was the effectiveness of the voice’s teachings. The spells that she had led Heather to in the Grimoires were remarkable. The insights on the craft were leaps and bounds ahead of anything that Henry had showed her or that she was likely to figure out herself. The voice had saved Manu’s life down in the chamber and that was something Heather would not forget. So she tolerated its dark mutterings about the world and some of its more sinister suggestions.

  #

  After the debacle at the brass door Henry had thrown himself into a new obsession, which Manu had instigated. Manu had been given a set of casting bones by his child-hood servant and friend in Africa. He had been some sort of shaman, Heather gathered, and had used the bones often and with accuracy. He had told Manu that his friend would be able to read the bones and Harrington had followed this up by reminding Manu that he should cast them. So Manu had given them to Henry and explained the situation, only to be told that Henry had not the slightest notion about divination in general and bone-casting in particular. The look of sad understanding on Manu’s face had been enough, added to Heather’s warning scowl, to persuade Henry to try. Once Henry decided to try something it was like a headlong sprint downhill at night.

  He had immersed himself in everything that had ever been written about bone-casting, trying to learn the art. His conversation was full of words like ‘Thola’ and ‘Imbay’ and ‘The throw Sinister’. He looked up spells of revealing that might act as a filter and he even consulted some of his apprentices asking them if they had ever seen it done. They had, but they didn’t know how it worked. The question confused and upset them: what sort of teacher didn’t know how to cast bones?

  The day arrived when Henry felt confident enough to give it a try. The three of them met in a small park on the outskirts of North Camland and Heather watched as Manu handed over the small leather bag to Henry with obvious
reverence. Henry looked very much as if he was trying to wing it and Heather narrowed her eyes.

  “He has absolutely no idea how to do this,” the whisper said to her and Heather nodded in agreement. Henry cleared a space in the earth and drew a circle with his cane. He split the circle into quarters and scratched the runic symbols for earth, plant, animal and fey. He rubbed the bones in his palms and cast them into the circle with his left hand. He hobbled over and peered at the result doubtfully.

  “This, er, says that your past is fundamental to your being. When the Thola lands on the earth quarter it means… that… there is something hidden, something not yet apparent from your past that will be very important. This is also strengthened by the Cohado and…”

  “Manu, are you sure you don’t want my mum to try?” Heather asked.

  Henry glared at her and scooped up the bones. He cast them two handed this time and peered at them. “You are angry and hurt. You feel abandoned and rage pours through you. You have bitter disappointment in the way the world has turned out.”

  Manu straightened and Heather rolled her eyes. “Oh come on Henry, that is basic observation. We learn that in the booth on day one.”

  Henry cast the bones a third time, this time with his right hand. “An act of evil will happen soon and its consequences may break the world. Only acceptance will stop it.”

  “Enough, Henry, this isn’t funny,” Heather said, taking Manu’s arm and leading him away.

  “What? That’s what they said!” Henry protested as he scooped up the bones and thrust them into the bag commencing an epic sulk.

  “You know what they are, don’t you?” the whisper asked her. She shook her head. “They are the bones of the Leopard King, collected by Arap Milgo, wraith-bane, in the moments after James Wardgrave killed it, with the help of his wife. The bones are potent. It’s a wonder the boy didn’t kill himself trying that.”

  Chapter Twenty Seven: History

  Heather loved the way the jade bracelet felt against her skin. It was smooth and cool and light on her wrist and yet not too tight so as to squeeze and chafe nor so loose that it ran up and down and tangled up in all the things she wanted to do. The colours were deep and complex; the hues would lighten and darken at unexpected times, gaining and losing russet fringes and azure strips like the moods of a changeable woman. Best of all was the sound that the bracelet made when she pressed the ends together. It was not a dramatic sound, no clap of thunder or banshee howl, but rather a soft little tap. Then she would be there. Smooth old wood would be under her feet and the serenity of the still lake would stretch out from the few unbroken and unboarded windows and she would smile at Watkins who would be there waiting, as if he knew exactly when the mood would take her to come to her refuge and dig deeper into the very essence of creation.

  She knew, of course, that it was no great trick for Watkins considering that she arrived at almost the same time every morning, more and more. The thrill of turning over the delicate pages of the Grimoires and puzzling her way through the ancient runes did not seem to wane. If anything, with the whisper as her teacher, her excitement grew every time she went into the library as the voice, when it was around, would smoothly translate and explain much of what she would otherwise have spent hours struggling to decipher.

  Watkins started to learn her ways. She would arrive through the portal and find her favourite pair of fur lined slippers set out. She would look up after hours of study to find that he had stolen in on silent feet and left a tall glass of a freshly blended smoothie, banana and strawberry, neatly presented on a coaster.

  Before long he was helping her to find particular volumes referenced in other works. His knowledge of the library was unmatched and he showed a remarkable familiarity with the authors and titles of even the most obscure practitioners.

  “What’s your first name, Watkins? The Darkwells boys might be alright calling you Watkins, but it bothers me,” Heather asked him on one of her visits. She had come through in the middle of a down-pour and Watkins had been waiting with towels and a warm dressing gown.

  “It’s Andrew, Miss Evynstone.”

  “Andrew. It suits you. Why don’t you ever cast anything Andrew? You know more about these books than any non-practitioner could possibly manage. I imagine half of what Henry knows comes through you.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Evynstone, but you are mistaken. I have no talent in that direction. My understanding comes through assisting Mr and Mrs Grenville and of course Master Grenville, who is, as you know, quite brilliant, if disorganised. It is this very failing which has led to my intimate knowledge of the library. You see, had he been a neat, tidy boy then I would have spent very little time in this room.”

  “How like Henry,” Heather said towelling her dripping hair vigorously, “to teach someone something complex by accident and via his slovenliness.”

  #

  Heather liked Watkins a great deal. She didn’t like to admit it to herself but there was something quite fatherly about him that called to her. He was strong and wise and considerate. He radiated protection and reliability. She could sense that behind his mask of formality he was a warm, caring person. A working class person. He was part of the Hawksworth world, master of it in many ways, but he was not from it. Like her.

  The Matron, however, Heather was less fond of. She didn’t share Henry’s obvious horror and fear of her but felt rather that she was somehow trampling over another woman’s territory. She got the uneasy feeling that the Matron was assessing her in the manner of a farmer buying a brood mare from a country fair.

  While Watkins did whatever he could to make Heather comfortable, Matron tried, without much subtly, to change Heather into what she was not. Little suggestions about how she wore her hair, about what colours suited her, about how she stood began to grate on Heather and she started going to trouble to avoid the older woman.

  It was on one of these diversions, where Heather veered off a corridor and into the closest room as she heard the heavy footsteps that could only be Matron, that she found herself in a compact study overlooking a wild and abandoned rose garden. The roses had broken out of their ordered rows and were intertwined in thorny bushes of white and yellow and red. How are they blooming at this time of year? Heather wondered. The study consisted of three shelves and a tidy little desk. On the desk were pots of ink and sheaves of virgin paper loose in a bundle.

  Heather pressed herself up against the door and listened as the footsteps receded down the corridor. As she was exiting her eye caught on a leather bound book that was protruding from the others stacked on the desk. Compelled for some reason Heather reached out for it. On the front, written in an elegant hand was:

  ANNE ASTOLAT - JOURNAL

  GRENVILLE

  Heather hesitated for a moment and turned to go. “Go on,” the voice urged, freezing her in place. “Aren’t you curious? The boy says so little, we should read it.” Still unsure, Heather squirmed for a second, wresting with her conscience before her resistance gave out.

  She drew out the chair, sat down and opened the book which was filled with the same elegant writing as on the cover. She went to the first entry.

  March 15th, 1982

  We are a week from South Georgia. Daddy says that the ship will be in icy seas in the next few days and that things might get a bit rough but that I shouldn’t be afraid. Mother is cross all the time as she worries about the equipment. The other members of the British Antarctic Survey team don’t seem to like her much, but that is just how Mother is when she is nervous. They’ll see. Once she gets going then they’ll all love her.

  As for me, well, unsurprisingly, few of the BAS group believe that I’d know where Trinity College is, let alone that I am a scientist. Funny, since I bet that none of them would be able to explain Particle Physics in the slightest. They think that Daddy is some eccentric millionaire bringing along his Princess on a whim. I can’t wait to see their faces when Mother succeeds.

  Heather flipped forward a
couple of pages.

  March 22nd, 1982

  We caught sight of the aurora australis for the first time today. Mother was right, they are very different from the borealis. I can sense the build up of power that Shackleton describes so beautifully. I think it really might work, and the very thought makes my hands shake with excitement.

  Transduced leyline waves used in generating power. It makes me a little dizzy just writing it down. Free power. The consequences are so vast that they are beyond me. I just hope the vortex is where my calculations say it should be.

  I went to find Daddy to tell him about spotting the Lights and found him curled up with his worn out copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight again. It disturbs me, how interested in that book he is. I even asked him about it. I teased him about what could possibly be so interesting in a dreary old tale and his answer was quite intriguing. I record as much as I can remember about it here for posterity. Daddy doesn’t usually speak so much about magic, which is silly as he knows more about it than anyone else.

  DADDY: It’s an allegory about magic. Gawain was the deadliest of the Warden-circle, of the Round-table you know. The challenge by the Green Knight, how he let Gawain behead him, the Green Knight carrying his own head out of Arthur’s hall and the test that follows - it describes our relationship with magic completely. We are Gawain and Magic is testing us, teasing us.

  ME: I thought the Green Knight was really his host, Bertilak?’ I asked him. ‘And it was Morganna who bewitched him.

  DADDY: Well, yes and no. The Green Knight is also a proto-mantle for the Warden State. Morganna’s Warden was by all accounts immensely powerful - whether it was Bertilak de Hautdesert is in dispute. But that is less important than what the poem is telling us.’