by Lari Don
Beth leapt up and walked towards Molly. “What? YOU? You’re the witch’s spawn? You cursed my wood? You scarred Rosalind? You burnt that tree to death?”
Suddenly Innes was standing between them, holding up his hands, blocking Beth’s way. “Hold on, Beth, let her finish.”
“I didn’t burn anyone! But apparently Aunt Doreen is her closest living descendant around here. So anyone she’s descended from, my grandad was also descended from… and my dad… and me. So that means I’m also…”
Beth was staring at her. Fists clenched, teeth gritted, tears sliding down her cheeks.
“But Beth, this could make it easier. If you ask me to forgive the woods in her name, maybe I can lift the curse. And that’s one curse gone before we even get past the crows.”
Beth shook her head. “But the trees didn’t do anything wrong. I refuse to ask you to forgive them, when they didn’t do anything wrong. You’re the evil magical witch. You’re the one who should be asking forgiveness.”
“I’m not a witch. I can’t do magic.”
“Yes, you can. You can transform into a hare, all on your own. That’s magic.”
“I’m just manipulating my curse. I’m not a witch, I didn’t curse your woods, and I know the trees weren’t at fault. But my ancestor blamed them, so if you ask me to forgive—”
“I’m not asking you for anything! Get out!”
Atacama said, “Beth, you liked the idea of asking the witch’s descendants when Molly first suggested it. You’d have had to say the same to them.”
“But that wouldn’t be a friend, in my bedroom. Someone I trusted and liked. If you are a witch, with Widdershins blood in your veins, I don’t want to ask your forgiveness and I don’t want to be in your stupid poxy curse-lifting team. Get out!”
“You made a promise,” said Innes.
“So?”
“Promises are harder to break safely than curses. So, keep your promise.”
“The promise feels heavier than the curse. But I suppose… alright. Out of the way, kelpie, so I can see the witch properly.”
Innes glanced at Molly and she nodded to him. So he moved out of the way. But not very far out of the way.
Beth and Molly stood in the centre of the bedroom, staring at each other.
Beth sighed. “Ok, witch-girl. Let’s make this sound good.” She held her hands out in front of her and spoke in a low voice. “All hail tricksy descendant of Meg Widdershins, deceiving scion of the Wilkie bloodline. Molly Drummond, will you accept that the trees of this wood did not hold ill will to your ancestor, will you… will you forgive the trees and the wood and the spirits within for the death by long, slow, painful, entirely deserved burning of your ancestor, and will you lift the curse that is killing our trees and scarring our family? Please.”
Molly nodded.
“You have to say it,” whispered Innes.
Atacama added, “Say it in the proper form. Not just ‘ok’.”
Molly spoke very slowly, hunting for words that sounded important and old-fashioned. “As the descendant of Margaret Wilkie, also known as Meg Widdershins, I acknowledge that the wood, the trees and the dryads did my ancestor no deliberate harm and were not to blame for the brutal sentence carried out by the humans of the town.” She held her hands out in front of her and slowly raised them up, aware that she looked daft, but feeling that she needed a theatrical gesture to accompany her theatrical words. “I hereby forgive the trees, the wood and the dryads within for any indirect involvement in the horrid and probably undeserved death of Meg Widdershins. I hereby lift the curse that falls on this wood in October every year.”
There was an uneasy silence.
Then Molly said, “Em… did that work?”
Beth shrugged. “I don’t feel any different. It just sounded like we were doing bad Shakespeare. So that was totally pointless. All I’ve achieved is realising that I can’t trust any humans, ever. So get out, hare-girl, and take your own chances with those crows.”
Molly sighed. “I’m sorry, I really thought that would work. Maybe it won’t be possible to lift any curses without Mrs Sharpe after all.”
Innes said, “It was a good idea, Molly. Maybe it has worked, but we won’t know until next October, when a tree either burns or doesn’t burn.”
“We can know right now,” said Atacama. “Look outside.”
They crowded round the window. The crow that had been strutting and preening in front of the others was now flat on the ground, its beak open and its wings slack. The glow of the flame etched on its wing was slowly fading.
“The curse-hatched is dead, so the curse must be dead too,” said the sphinx. “Beth, your curse is lifted. Your trees are safe.”
Chapter 25
Beth stepped back from the window, sat hard on the bed and put her head in her hands.
Innes threw his arms around Molly and gave her a violent hug. “Well done witch-girl! That was brilliant! Can you lift mine as easily?”
Molly pushed him away. “If you think that was easy, for me or for Beth, you weren’t paying attention.”
“It wasn’t easy,” said Beth, “but it worked!” She leapt up and hugged Molly too. “You really didn’t know? About being a witch?”
“I’m not a witch. I don’t know any magic, so I’m not a witch. But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that we can’t lift Innes’s curse or my curse while we’re stuck in your bedroom. We could lift Atacama’s in here, but at some point, we’re going to have to get past those crows.”
Atacama said, “Let’s solve the riddle of the crows first, before we consider my riddle. Because they don’t look like they’re leaving…”
They peered out of the window again. Hundreds of crows were standing, heads lowered, gazing at the dead crow. Then, at the same moment, they all raised their heads and stared at the house again.
Molly closed the curtain. “Are they just at the front or all the way round the house?”
“I checked from every window when we got upstairs,” said Beth. “There was a complete circle, three crows deep.”
Innes said, “We could distract them and sneak past…”
Atacama snorted. “Distract them? With what? Singing? Dancing? Puppets? Shiny things? They’re crows, not magpies!”
Innes shrugged. “We could tunnel out…”
Beth shook her head. “Not through my trees’ roots.”
Molly said, “We stole eggs from them while they were asleep. Could we get out when they sleep tonight?”
Innes shook his head. “I don’t think they’ll all sleep at once. They’ll post sentries.”
Molly frowned. “So could we—”
They heard a sudden sharp creak.
Molly jumped, but Beth said, “It’s just someone coming up our creaky stairs.”
Atacama whispered, “Beth, don’t tell your family that the curse is lifted. I think it would be dangerous, for us and for Mrs Sharpe, if Corbie discovers that we’re trying to get rid of all the curses rather than just waiting for Mrs Sharpe to lift one. So don’t tell anyone yet.”
Beth nodded as Aunt Jean opened the bedroom door.
“Beth, dear, we need to talk about those crows. The rest of the family want to check on their trees, but we’re all stuck indoors. Could you do your homework with the crows somewhere else?”
Beth shook her head. “The crows are trying to stop us lifting the curses. So we have to get rid of them or get past them if we’re going to finish Mrs Sharpe’s workshop.”
Aunt Jean sighed. “Can we help? Would Aggie think that was cheating?”
“You could help with advice,” said Molly. “How did you get Rosalind to sleep?”
“A herbal infusion. Many of the herbs in this wood have a strong sedative effect, and I keep a stock of them in the kitchen.”
Molly smiled. “So let’s make all those crows sleepy.”
“How?” asked Innes. “Crows won’t sip a mug of herbal tea.”
Molly sa
id, “We could bake cakes, soak them in the herbal brew, then throw crumbs out the window, so the crows eat them… Would that work, Jean?”
Beth’s aunt nodded. “You’d need lots of cake and a big pot of herbs, and if it’s part of your course, you should do the preparation yourself. But yes, it could work.”
Atacama said, “We’ll need a good reason for chucking the crumbs out, so the crows aren’t suspicious.”
“Let’s burn the cakes,” said Beth, “as if they’d been baked by Rosalind.”
Aunt Jean said, “The infusion will need time to soak in, then dry, so you’ll all have to stay the night. Which is no bad thing, because you look exhausted. You can give the crows sleep-inducing crumbs if they’re still there in the morning.”
Molly suddenly realised they’d been up all last night building a farm, and all day today stealing stone eggs and failing to do good deeds. She yawned, setting off a Mexican wave of yawns from everyone else.
Jean laughed. “I’ll find quilts for everyone. Then once your cakes are in the oven, I’ll show you how to make the sleeping brew.”
Soon Beth had Innes weighing flour and Molly beating eggs. Atacama was busy batting cake cases into place on a tray with his front paws, but Molly noticed he was also muttering under his breath.
Innes whispered, “He’s trying to find his new riddle. That was a good idea too!”
Once the fairy cakes were in the oven, Beth put a big black pan of water onto the stove to heat, and called for her Aunt Jean.
“You’ll need to chop these finely,” Jean pulled handfuls of fresh flowering herbs from a rack above the dresser, “and grind these into a paste,” she pulled another handful of herbs from a shelf. Then she placed three sharp knives and a mortar and pestle on the table.
Molly took her stone egg out of her pocket. “Perhaps we should grind with this, because these are the eggs those crows hatch from.”
Jean smiled. “You have a natural sense of how magic operates. So, cut that pile, grind this pile, put them all in at once and simmer for exactly thirteen minutes. You can soak the fairy cakes once it’s cool.”
Jean tidied up the cake-mix-splattered kitchen, while Molly ground and the others chopped.
Molly looked down at the stone egg in her hand and felt how right it was to escape from the curse-hatched crows using their own un-hatched egg as a tool. Then she looked up at Jean, who was rinsing spoons at the sink.
“Excuse me, Jean. What makes a person a witch? And what exactly is a witch?”
“There are good witches and bad witches, in both senses. Witches who use their power for good, and witches who use their power for evil. But also witches who are good at what they do, skilled and powerful magic users, and witches who just dabble. Witches tend to be human: people who can recognise the magic around them, then learn methods to manipulate that magic. You now know about the magic around you, because you’ve met a handful of beings who are born to magic. But most beings like us have only our own limited magic, we don’t usually access any other kinds. Kelpies shift shape; dryads speak to trees. We are magic, but we don’t do magic. Witches, on the other hand, can harness all the different magics around them, if they can find someone to teach them.”
“So a person can’t be born a witch?” asked Molly.
Jean started scrubbing the mixing bowls. “No one is born a witch. The knowledge is often passed down in families, and a heightened ability to harness magic can be inherited too. But no one becomes a witch without both the ability to work with magic, then the effort of learning specific spells. No one is born a functioning witch. Why do you ask? Do you want to be a witch?”
“No! I just wondered what Mrs Sharpe was.”
“Aggie Sharpe is good and powerful, but also aging and tired. So you just want to learn how to lift a curse?”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t look for more. Don’t chase more spells than you can handle, Molly.”
Molly nodded and added another handful of fragrant leaves to the paste she was grinding.
Soon the herbs were in the water, the deliberately burnt cakes were out of the oven, and the infusion had simmered for exactly thirteen minutes. Aunt Jean made everyone sandwiches while they waited for the infusion to cool.
They spent a messy half hour dipping each cake in the mixture, letting it soak up lots of liquid, then sitting it on a rack to dry. Beth wrote a sign:
Dryads! Do not eat!
Danger of Dozing…
Then everyone went upstairs to bed.
Beth lent Molly pyjamas, and they all lay down: Beth in her bed, Molly in a sleeping bag on the floor nearby, Atacama and Innes on the other side of the room in a pile of quilts and pillows.
When Beth put the light out, they could hear nothing, no creaking stairs, no wind in the trees. No crows. But they knew the birds were out there, standing still, staring at the house.
Molly whispered, “I’m not a witch, Beth. You heard what Jean said. Just because I’m related to a witch, doesn’t make me a witch.”
“No. Ok. You’re not a witch. So what are you, Molly Drummond?”
“I’m a girl who can run fast. But once my curse is lifted, I’ll go home to Edinburgh and school, and I’ll be an ordinary girl again…”
Chapter 26
“So, why are we throwing crumbs out of all the windows?” asked Innes.
“Don’t you remember why we baked and soaked all those cakes last night?” Molly was lacing up her trainers.
“Yes, I know why we’re doing it, but we don’t want the crows to know,” said Innes. “So what reason can we give them for throwing crumbs out of all the windows?”
“The cakes are burnt, so we’re getting rid of them,” said Beth. “Rosalind often throws crumbs out for the birds…”
“Out of every window? At the same time?”
“The crows will be hungry,” said Beth. “They’ve been there all night. If we give them a vaguely convincing reason to peck at the crumbs, they’ll eat them, then fall asleep before they can think, ‘Huh? Why did those kids do that?’”
“You hope.”
“I hope.”
“It doesn’t need to be every window,” said Atacama calmly. “Just the middle window on each side of the house. If we argue loudly about the quality of the cakes at each window, then throw them out at the same time, most crows will only see it happening from the window they’re facing.”
“There are four of us and four outside walls,” said Innes. “We’ll have to argue with ourselves.”
Beth laughed. “You’re perfectly capable of starting an argument in an empty room, Innes Milne, so that should be easy enough.”
They all stood up. Dressed and washed and ready for a day of curse lifting.
“I’ll do the kitchen window,” said Beth. “Atacama and Innes, take the two different walls of the living room, and Molly, you’ll have to take the downstairs loo. Throw your crumbs when I signal with the dinner bell. Ok?”
Molly carried her bowl of burnt cake crumbs into the bathroom. The only way to reach the small window was to climb onto the toilet. So she put the bowl on the sink, closed the toilet lid, and clambered up, one foot on the lid, one on the cistern behind. She leant over, wobbling slightly, to pick up the bowl.
But as she stood straight again and stretched to see out of the window, her left foot slipped off the cistern and landed on the handle.
The toilet started to flush under her feet, splashing and groaning as if the plumbing was under too much pressure.
Molly pulled herself up so she was crouching on the vibrating cistern, and looked outside at three curved lines of stern black crows.
“These are rubbish cakes,” Molly said loudly. “I’ll flush them down the toilet.”
“No,” she squeaked in a high voice. “I baked those cakes all by myself! Don’t put them down the toilet, it’s not polite to the cakes.”
“But no one can eat them,” Molly replied in her own voice, feeling very silly, perched on a
toilet, arguing with herself. “They’re burnt. They’re horrid. I’m going to put them down the loo.”
“NO! That’s a waste. The birds and the slugs and the earie-wigs will eat them.”
Molly could hear voices in other rooms, in a variety of high and low pitches, all arguing about cakes. She raised her voice very slightly. “No! Don’t grab!”
“NO! They’re mine!”
She was wondering how much longer she had to keep this up, when she heard the bell.
Molly pushed the window open, lifted the bowl and shouted, “Ok, the slugs and the earie-wigs can have your cakes, because even the toilet is making funny noises at the idea of eating them!”
She flung the crumbs in a wide arc towards the crows. “That’s what I think of your baking!”
The swinging throw knocked her off balance and she slipped off the cistern, her foot hitting the flush again, then fell onto the tiled floor. The bowl landed upside down on top of her, scattering crumbs in her hair, while the toilet flushed loudly beside her.
She sighed and clambered back up to look out the tiny window.
The crows were rushing forward, arguing and cackling, croaking and pecking, eating up all the crumbs.
Molly smiled.
Then the crows returned to their posts in the still silent creepy circle.
She held her breath. A couple of crows preened their feathers. A couple of crows clacked their beaks. But all the crows stood upright, wide awake, staring at the house.
Molly shivered. Would they be trapped here forever?
Then she saw a crow yawn. And another. One crow fell forward onto its beak, then another fell sideways, knocking over a whole row of yawning black crows, like a line of unspotted dominoes.
Suddenly all the crows were yawning and drooping and falling. Then they were all flat on the ground, snoring.
Molly grinned and stepped carefully off the cistern, avoiding the flush, then down from the toilet onto the tiles.
Rosalind was standing in the bathroom doorway, her dark hair loose and fluffy, and a bandage round her throat. “Why were you feeding cakes to earie-wigs? And why were you standing on the toilet? You’re meant to sit on the toilet!”
