Curse of the Dream Witch

by Allan Stratton

  ‘My parents are dying because of me. How can I live knowing that? If we can defeat the Dream Witch, maybe her spells will be broken. Maybe I can save them.’

  It was true. Olivia knew it. She took his hands. ‘Let’s make a vow, then. Let’s promise ourselves that no matter how scared we get, we’ll always remember there’s someone else who’s just as scared. We’re not alone.’

  ‘I’ll say you’re not,’ Ephemia declared. ‘As long as these little lungs have breath, you’ve a guardian, loyal and true.’

  ‘The best in the world,’ Olivia said. She picked up her furry companion. ‘Back at the castle you said you knew the ways of the Dream Witch. Tell us, please. What do we need to do to defeat her?’

  ‘The Dream Witch rules by fear,’ Ephemia counselled. ‘Destroy that fear and she’s done for.’

  ‘But how? Her curses and spells are endless.’

  ‘Aha! You see how she works? The thought of conquering her spells seems impossible. It makes you afraid. Already she has you.’

  ‘No she doesn’t. I just want a plan, that’s all. It’s one thing to be brave. It’s another thing to be stupid.’

  Ephemia scratched her ear with her hind paw. ‘Here it is, then: The Dream Witch makes her potions and spells in her private chambers. They’re beneath her forest cottage at the end of her underground labyrinth. We must confront her power at its source.’

  Milo’s voice came alive with terror and excitement. ‘I woke up there with the other stolen children. She took me down some stairs to her study. There were piles of spell books and a writing desk with a stack of parchments made of bat wings.’

  ‘Those spell books are the keys to the visions she makes,’ Ephemia declared.

  ‘How do you know?’ Olivia asked.

  Ephemia puffed up her chest. ‘Once upon a time, those spell books were mine. She stole them from me while I was lost in daydreams.’

  ‘Dreams.’ Olivia’s brow furrowed. ‘Tell me this: If the witch’s visions aren’t real, how can they hurt us?’

  ‘Imagination is a powerful thing,’ Ephemia said darkly. ‘What we believe – what we think we know – can destroy us. The creatures and landscapes of the Dream Witch are deadly real within her lair. If you die in her dreams, you die in the real world too.’

  Olivia gripped for the pysanka, wrapped in the pocket of her cloak. ‘But we have the talisman.’

  ‘Yes. And as long as you keep it safe beside you, she can’t come near. But never doubt her cunning. She’ll try to use her phantoms to destroy it. So stay alert.’

  ‘No worries there,’ Milo said.

  ‘Good,’ Ephemia said. ‘I’ll help as I can. I may not be able to keep my spells straight, but my mousley form has connected me to nature. I’ve learned how to listen to the world: to speak the languages of fur and feather; to hear the whispers in leaves and vines; and to know the way of lowly things. All this I put to your service.’

  Olivia kissed Ephemia on the forehead. ‘Thank you.’

  The three friends looked past the fields of corn to the forest silhouetted against the starry sky.

  Olivia cleared her throat. ‘Onward, then, to the witch’s cottage.’

  And off they went.

  A Matter of Honour

  Perspiration oozed from Leo’s scalp. It soaked his greasy hair, trickled into his ears, dripped off his chin, and inflamed the glistening pustules on his cheeks and forehead.

  ‘Please, Uncle, I don’t want to go.’

  The prince was with the duke in the castle stable; fifty cavalry were horsed and waiting outside in the courtyard. The soldier who’d been tossed down the well had been swept into the marsh, where he’d found Olivia and Milo’s footprints in the muddy banks. He’d followed them to a ditch along a road leading through the countryside towards the forest. Now all that remained was for the prince to lead his troops in pursuit.

  His uncle planted his feet between the manure piles. ‘You’re heir to the Pretonian throne, boy,’ he glowered, meaty hands on meatier hips. ‘And you’re afraid to take what’s yours? That princess is your prize – a prize snatched from under your nose by a peasant. You’d let that stand?’

  ‘N-not usually, no,’ Leo stammered. ‘But the Dream Witch is about.’

  ‘That didn’t frighten the princess. She hopped down a well. Are you telling me a little caged birdie has more courage than a Pretonian prince? What will your father say if he hears you’ve shamed him?’

  ‘What will he say if he hears I’m dead?’

  ‘He’ll boast he had a son who died battling a witch, and order a glorious state funeral, of course. You’ll have a parade, monuments, and ceremonial wreaths so grand they’ll empty every florist in the kingdom.’

  ‘But I’ll be dead!’ Leo’s armoured knees knocked together. There was a terrible clang.

  The duke pressed his index finger on his nephew’s nose. ‘Listen to me, boy: You have a responsibility to the honour of the Pretonian throne. Re-capture that girl or earn your father’s contempt now and forever.’

  ‘Please, Uncle, no,’ Leo sniffled. ‘Aside from the witch, I’m afraid I could fall off my horse.’

  ‘Why? Are you an idiot?’

  ‘No. But I can’t gallop. The men will laugh at me.’

  ‘They’ll laugh even harder if you don’t hoist your tail onto your trusty steed and lead them to glory.’

  Leo withered under his uncle’s scorn. He whimpered over to his horse, a mighty beast with fearsome hooves, a braided mane, and steam shooting from its nostrils. Then he wiped his nose, slithered up a stepladder and crawled onto the saddle.

  The duke passed him his helmet; a warrior’s envy with a chainmail collar, steel visor, and red plumes. Leo put it on.

  ‘A true Pretonian prince,’ his uncle said. ‘You look the part. Now act it.’

  With that, he smacked the horse’s rump. The beast reared up with a whinny and charged into the courtyard, the shrieking prince clinging to its reins.

  Into the Woods

  The road turned at the last cornfield before the forest. The cornstalks towered above them. Beyond the first row all the friends could see was a jungle of darkness.

  ‘What to do?’ Ephemia fretted. ‘We can’t make a noise; the Evil One may be near. On the roads and in the ditches I could warn you about rocks and potholes. But the corn is so dense I don’t know how to guide you without a racket of rustling and crunching.’

  ‘I know how to walk these fields with my eyes closed,’ Milo volunteered. ‘I used to do it for fun.’ He turned to Olivia. ‘Put your hand on my shoulder. Keep to my pace. We’ll be at the edge of the forest in no time.’

  Olivia did as she was told and the pair moved forward, their progress silent save for their breaths. Olivia imagined the ears of corn bending to hear their heartbeats. She pictured messages sent root by root to the Dream Witch in her lair. But that was impossible. Wasn’t it?

  There was a sudden snapping of dried stalks. Something was moving straight ahead. Something that didn’t care if it was heard.

  Milo and Olivia froze. So did the creature. Whatever it was, it knew they were there. They could feel its eyes peering at them from the dark.

  ‘It’s only a fox,’ Ephemia murmured.

  At the sound of the voice, the animal tore away, kicking up dirt and husks.

  Olivia shivered. If this was what it was like to travel through a cornfield, how would her nerves carry her through the witch’s underworld? For the first time in memory, life in a turret didn’t seem so bad.

  ‘Forward,’ Milo whispered calmly. A few more minutes and they were free of the field.

  Olivia had only ever seen the forest from a distance. By daylight, from her turret window, it had looked inviting; a retreat so lush and green she could barely believe it was home to the sorceress. But up close at night, its mighty oaks loomed grim as ghostly sentries, their canopy a shroud to hide dark deeds.

  Milo and Olivia edged their way through a strip of grasses and under
the forest branches at the tree line. From here there’d be no stars to guide them, all light extinguished by the boughs above.

  Ephemia coaxed them into the inky void. ‘Fallen branch to the right . . . Weasel den to the left,’ she navigated, as they crossed the floor of rotting leaves. At first they made good progress, but soon Milo and Olivia were walking in different directions. Keeping them on track was impossible.

  ‘Which way’s ahead?’ asked Milo, his arms waving blindly in the dark.

  ‘Where do I go now?’ from Olivia.

  Ephemia sniffed the air and found an inspiration. ‘Wait and see!’ She tilted her head back and opened her mouth. Out came a sound so high that neither of the friends could hear it – a sound, indeed, as silent as thought.

  At once, speckles of greenish light flickered in the air around them. More glimmered by the second, and more and more, all twinkling in the dark.

  Milo’s eyes grew large: ‘Fireflies!’

  ‘Yes,’ Ephemia beamed. ‘Forest friends.’

  Summoned together for a mighty task, the little creatures flitted in from every corner of the bush. They multiplied beyond number, coating rocks and trunks and fallen branches. As they clustered, shapes emerged – trees and shrubs shimmering in an otherworldly green.

  Ephemia opened her mouth again and spoke the silent language of the woods: Show us the way to the Dream Witch’s cottage.

  The fireflies flew up from their resting places and gathered themselves into a glowing ball of light. It floated in the air, then swooped down and rolled itself out above the ground like a glittering carpet.

  As Olivia, Milo and Ephemia ventured towards the path, the fireflies made way; they hovered ahead, their light leading the trio safely through thickets, around brambles, and over a great log fallen across a stream. They passed three boulders on their left.

  ‘These boulders . . .’ Milo whispered. ‘I’ve been here before. The night the Dream Witch caught me.’

  Ephemia nodded gravely. ‘We’re near her lair.’

  The air grew musky, ripe with the damp smell of rot. By the dim glow, Olivia and Milo saw mushrooms in profusion, deep reds and yellows and browns; they nested in the spongy wet of decaying stumps and sprouted like saucers from ancient tree trunks. And now there was a new smell, raw and sickly sweet. It was the smell of death.

  The fireflies roiled into the air in terror. Wave upon wave, they vanished into the night. For a moment all was still, and then the friends saw glimmers of firelight filtering through a dense cluster of thorn bushes.

  ‘We’ve arrived,’ Ephemia said. ‘Step carefully.’

  The three tiptoed stealthily around the thicket, the blanket of rotten leaves swallowing up their footsteps. But as they circled, the firelight circled with them. No matter how far they travelled it was always twinkling from the other side of the thorns. By the third time around, it was clear something was very wrong.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Olivia asked.

  ‘Stay here. I’ll go around by myself,’ Ephemia said. ‘If I chase the light back to this side of the thicket, hide yourselves in the hollowed log to your right.’

  Olivia and Milo laid low as Ephemia scurried round the bushes yet again.

  ‘Did you see it?’ she asked on her return.

  ‘No,’ Olivia said.

  ‘But you must have. It kept opposite me full circle.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what you saw,’ Olivia said. ‘From here the light stayed steady on the other side.’

  ‘I think I’ve got it,’ Milo said. ‘The night I got caught, I tried to go home. But everything was turned around, all back to front.’

  ‘Back to front!’ Olivia understood at once. ‘So while we’ve each been thinking the cottage is in front of us, it may actually be behind.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘All right then,’ Olivia said. ‘At the count of three, let’s look over our shoulders. One. Two. Three.’

  Olivia, Milo and Ephemia glanced backwards. Sure enough, they were suddenly beyond the thicket. The witch’s cottage was barely a hundred feet away.

  The cottage looked very much as Olivia remembered it from the drawing. Resting at the far end of a small grove, it was surrounded by a hedge of thighbones capped by a row of skulls. Except, as Olivia now realised, the skulls were lamps, each holding a candle whose ghastly flare shone through empty nostrils and eye sockets, and the vines on the cottage walls were, in fact, dark veins throbbing in the skull-light.

  At the centre of the fence was an archway; its sides were made of shoulder blades, its canopy an opened ribcage. From here, a path of knuckles and kneecaps led to the front door. Thatching from the roof hung above the entrance like coarse combed hair. Windows on either side stared out, half-shuttered in sleep. As for the door itself – it was a mouth. Hideous lips framed giant teeth that creaked open and shut, as if the cottage had rusty hinges or, perhaps, was snoring.

  ‘It’s alive,’ Olivia gasped.

  Ephemia put a paw to her lips. ‘Shh.’

  The friends crept to the fence. They slipped quietly under the archway. But the moment they stepped on the path, the skull-lamps flared.

  The cottage roused. Its shutters blinked open. Its door of teeth clamped shut. Smoke billowed from its chimney. A fierce red blazed behind its window-eyes.

  Something inside was looking out.

  Without thinking, Olivia grabbed the pysanka from her pocket and held it in the air before them.

  The light dimmed out behind the windows. The shutters closed. There was a pause. Then, once again, the monstrous mouth dozed open and shut, open and shut.

  ‘It’s now or never,’ Milo said. He pulled a thighbone from the fence and raced to the entrance. When the mouth opened, he wedged it between the teeth. The bone bent as the mouth tried to close. ‘Quickly.’

  The trio dived through the opening. No sooner were they inside the cottage than the thighbone shattered. The door snapped shut.

  They were stuck in a terrible blackness.

  Olivia gagged at the warm stench. ‘Is everyone all right?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Milo said.

  Ephemia jumped on Olivia’s shoulder. ‘Me too. But oh dear, oh dear!’

  ‘What is it, Ephemia? What do you see?’

  Before the mouse could answer, the floor began to rise and fall. Olivia toppled to her knees. Her hands touched something wet and spongy.

  ‘What kind of carpet is this?’

  ‘It’s not a carpet,’ Ephemia said, as the floor heaved them to the back of the cottage.

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘It’s a tongue!’

  Olivia screamed, as the cottage swallowed them down its earthen gullet into the witch’s underworld.

  Hunter and Hunted

  A nervous rash erupted in Leo’s armpits as he led the cavalry out of the castle. The itch was unbearable. Still, it gave him something to think about besides his terror of meeting the witch.

  The company rode through the town and down the hill to the marsh, halting at the place where the runaways’ tracks had been spotted. The first officer lowered his torch, and peered at the footprints.

  ‘No doubt they thought they were smart to skulk in the ditch,’ he said. ‘But this mud tells a tale the hard road would have kept secret.’

  Leo’s Adam’s apple bobbled in his throat. ‘Where to now?’

  ‘Wherever Your Highness commands.’

  Hooray! Then back to the castle, Leo thought. But that was impossible. His men would laugh at him. His voice jumped an octave: ‘Follow the footprints.’

  The cavalry tracked the trail through the countryside. Leo’s rash blossomed. It spread down his sides and into his underpants. He tried to rub his bum against the saddle. The itch got worse.

  ‘There’s a camp fire in the valley below,’ the first officer said.

  They galloped down, but all they found were a man with a wooden foot and a woman huddled by the ashes of a burnt-out homestead. The couple told the soldiers t
hey’d seen no one but a pair of good-hearted children. ‘We gave the poor things food and clothing. Are they in trouble?’

  ‘If we find them,’ Leo blustered. ‘Where did they go?’

  Milo’s father looked at his wife. ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘If you’re lying, you’ll be missing more than a leg,’ Leo said.

  ‘Over here,’ a soldier called out. He pointed at fresh boot marks.

  The trail led to the cornfield by the witch’s forest. The tickle in Leo’s drawers was unbearable. ‘They seem to have vanished,’ he said hopefully.

  ‘With respect, Your Highness, I think they went through the corn stalks.’

  ‘Exactly. We’ve lost them. They could be anywhere in that jungle. If we try to follow them, our torches will burn the field down around us.’

  ‘You’d let them go?’

  ‘No, but I, well . . .’

  There was a whoosh in the air above them.

  ‘What was that?’ Leo trembled.

  The men looked up. A great owl swooped out of the night.

  Leo convulsed in terror. His legs flailed, his arms flapped. The spurs on his feet dug into his horse’s flanks. The reins in his hands slapped its neck. The steed charged forward into the cornfield.

  ‘Woah!’ Leo cried, bouncing this way and that. But with every bounce he landed a boot with his spurs. The horse galloped faster, out of control.

  Leo couldn’t think; couldn’t breathe. There was corn everywhere. Stalks flayed his face. Cobs boxed his ears. Tassels got up his nose.

  His horse burst free of the field. And now – oh no – it hurtled into the forest.

  ‘Stop!’ Leo squealed. But the horse paid no heed. Guided by an invisible host, it dodged trees and leapt over brooks, racing at a mad clip, impossible to follow.

  How will my men be able to find me? Leo panicked. What will become of me?

  He grabbed the reins at the bridle and yanked them back sharply. The horse came to a sudden stop. Leo pitched over its head and landed in a raspberry bush.

  ‘Where are you, you mangy beast?’ Leo cried. ‘Get me out of here.’