Crow Heart (The Witch Ways Book 4)

by Helen Slavin

  If only the girl would come. She must come. In the near distance, Nuala heard cars passing. She would come.

  She moved around the stones, willing it. There must be a way she could conserve what remained of Thinne’s power, put it into the stones to stop the Wrangle devouring it. She made a circuit, stumbled and tripped as she placed a scrap here, a stash there, filling the fissures with her dark intention, making the stones hers. The air was cold as knives; her breath made fog in front of her that twisted into ghosts of herself, as if, with each breath, she breathed herself out. Her heart beat a tattoo, and she thought of all the heartbeats she had ever stolen, how they were all drumming out of her at once.

  Sparks in the trees. Nuala gasped at the beauty and felt terror. Let the girl come.

  At the hollow in the Queen stone, she hid herself. As the stone swallowed her, she felt it reflect and amplify Thinne’s waning power. Enough, there would be enough.

  Let the girl come.

  38

  Cobwebs. Dead Squirrels. Cat’s Teeth. Blinded Eye

  Aurora Foundling, like most of the more law-abiding residents of Woodcastle, had never been in Havoc Wood. She laughed to herself. She had more than been in Havoc Wood — she had been brought through the place, wrapped up in a pocket full of moss and feathers, a hedgehog of a child and too young to remember.

  The wood was filled with scent. There was the underlying fungal must, the damp earthiness of leaf litter and loam, the waft of rotting trunks and branches. There was a whiff here of fox or badger, powerful and distinct. Woven into it all were other scents of woodsmoke and of honey that Aurora found unspeakably beautiful, as if she had never before possessed a sense of smell.

  Now she walked with the Way sisters, and she saw how, as they made their way through the wood, they trod their own routes. Spaces that seemed impassable suddenly fluttered with a breeze to reveal that, yes, there was a way through here. The sisters, she saw, walked in a sort of triangle around her, a cordon or escort.

  Tonight it was not the quickest way that mattered, as they headed out to The Sisters. Tonight they moved with more than stealth. They trailed intent and purpose, and Anna, walking at the right hand of their triangle, saw where the Wood’s shadows flitted, light freckling the darkness. Crooked daylight. She held it within her Strength, drawing it around them, both cover and comfort.

  At the front of the triangle, Charlie let her Strength run ahead like a hunting dog. Tonight there was no leash on her. She felt as she had when she was eight or nine, that the Wood knew her and she knew the Wood, and she saw where the paths lit, where the trails were shadow. The mycelium beneath their feet pulsed and frittered with information and energy. Charlie felt her Strength begin to leech itself into the fabric of the wood, to find the lines in the bark and to follow the earthworms. Above them, the waning gibbous moon winked between clouds. Borrowed moonlight. It struck her — that was what Grandma had said in the dream.

  To the left of their triangle, Emz felt the rushing heart of the wood, sap rising and nourishing. Every creaking limb had a voice tonight. The deer she had healed was running in from Hare’s Ell, its heart pattering fast. She felt armoured with bark. In the treetops, she read the sleeping dreams of squirrels curled in dreys. Emz looked up and beyond to where the clouds scudded away from the moon and revealed the velvet blue pinpricked with silver. She thought of the fox embroidered on the label in her grandmother’s coat and the sewn stars he trotted beneath. Ragged starlight. The words whispered into her head, and she held onto their incantation.

  The four young women stepped out of the trees at the circumference of The Sisters.

  Their plan, such as it was, meant that Aurora kept back a little here, Charlie nodding to her as the three sisters peeled off around the stones. Aurora, starting to count to a hundred in her head to give them time to get into position, saw that, once again, they would be triangulated around the stones — around her. She looked up at the moon. She had always liked a gibbous moon. The angle of it looked like a face tilted, paying more attention, somehow, to what was going on below. She looked down at the shadows the stone Sisters cast. They were long and stately, and she moved to stand in the darkness of one. It felt cool and safe. She could not see the Way sisters now, but she did not feel alone. Where had she got to with her counting? Ninety-nine? One hundred? Thereabouts.

  Aurora Foundling walked out into the centre of the circle. The moment she stepped through the stones, she felt her hair crackle with static. She took deep breaths and understood what brave meant. You don’t run, even if you really want to. There was no one about. She wheeled around with all the appearance of calm, even though her heart was like a greyhound on a track.

  “Hello?”

  Charlie stepped into the shadow of a stone at the eastern side of the circle as Aurora’s voice echoed back from the stone.

  “Hello? It’s Aurora. I’m here.” That echo, as if the stones sang her name, made Aurora feel a little braver. “Here I am.”

  Emz looked from the shadow of her stone, saw where Aurora opened her arms wide, a gesture not so much of welcome, but of challenge. Emz struggled with memories of all that she and her sisters had seen lately. Of that terrible Halloween storm when Calum and Ethan had skidded from the bridge. Of the loss of Grandma Hettie, the loss of their mother. Of their fights and fears with Mrs Fyfe and with Borrower, and she tried to parcel it all away. Her mind tied it up with red thread. She must focus on the circle of stones and what they might have to do. She was watchful of Aurora, because Aurora was bait, and they must keep her safe. With that thought in her mind, she saw the white-haired woman step out of the Queen stone, as if by magic.

  Aurora felt her breath catch. Her heart raced, felt out of her control, and she looked up. Nuala Whitemain’s hair was spotlit by the moon. Her fingers were raised. She was making a pinching gesture, as if she might be sprinkling salt. Aurora felt her skin prickle. She struggled to take another breath, and the stones tilted, started to spin, as if dancing. They swept her up into the reel.

  Nuala Whitemain let the girl’s heartbeat ease, her breathing deepen. Must not kill her before she was broken. She reached into her pocket for the rattlebag of cat bones carrying their heavy magic. She took them out with her right hand, but the Red Wrangle sniffed and snaffled at them anyway. Nuala must work quickly. She drew in more of Thinne’s power. The Red Wrangle drained out an equal amount. She must find the balancing point. She stepped to Aurora’s prone figure and raised her hand with the first bone, sharpened into a pin.

  “I—” Her voice was snatched out of the air. A hand reached to her left wrist and the Red Wrangle. Nuala gave a cry of rage. The Gamekeeper stood with a face like marble, unmoved, unfeeling.

  “Nuala Whitemain.” The voice was hard. “You took a life within the bounds of Havoc Wood.”

  Nuala stilled, her mind racing. She faced down the Gamekeeper; her eyes glinted with malice.

  “Just one?” she whispered, unnerved at the way the stones caught her words and sang them out. From the eastern edge of the circle, she heard one of the Gamekeepers give a stifled cry and was heartened. She felt the Gamekeeper’s grip falter at the truth, just as she felt the Red Wrangle flare and pulse. Defiant, she laughed and was unsettled by the hollow sound it made against the ring of stones. The Gamekeeper leaned close to her ear and whispered.

  “Nuala Whitemain, I. Pin. You.” The whisper of Anna Way’s voice rang against the stones with a mournful note. She took the cat-bone pin from Nuala’s fingers and threaded it into the strands of the Red Wrangle.

  Nuala, dread clutching at her, scrabbled at the bone pin, at the Wrangle, and was aware from the corner of her vision of two people moving into the stone circle from the east and west. Let them come.

  She abandoned the first cat-bone pin and with her free hand, her fingers scrabbled for her bag of bones. She had a moment to save this, a moment to snatch the Gamekeeper’s power and use it against her own sisters. One by one she would take them, easy as cats. Sh
e raised her hand, the fresh bone clutched in it. It was dragged down.

  “Nuala Whitemain, I. Pin. You.” Charlie Way’s voice vibrated through the earth of the stones, spoke to the land. She took the pin from Nuala’s hand and stabbed it into the fleshy base of her right hand. Thus pinned, Nuala could only look on as the youngest sister stepped up.

  “Nuala Whitemain, I. Pin. You.” This one’s whisper hissed hardest, a sound like wire cutting into Nuala. This girl reached into Nuala’s pocket and took out all the cat-bone pins. As she did so, the cat reformed itself, the skin ruffling over the bones. With a light leap, it jumped onto Nuala’s chest, its needle teeth close to her as its rough tongue licked her face, and she felt the dark magic she had drawn from it being taken away. Her mind seized upon the glint of her greatest weapon.

  “Pity an old woman,” Nuala yelled out, “alone in a wood… Pity the father… Pity the son…” Her words sounded like knives against the stones, and she heard where all the Gamekeepers held their breath — their hearts stuttered. The Red Wrangle died suddenly. It felt cold and clammy, leathery as old skin, and a bitter sensation flooded Nuala. Fear.

  Anna Way felt her legs shaking as if they might not carry her. Pity the father, pity the son. The grief in her heart was like the Queen stone, towering and immoveable. Her Strength reached in and weaponised it.

  Crooked daylight. The Red Wrangle slithered and lashed Nuala to Anna Way.

  Borrowed moonlight. Charlie Way sensed the land beneath them, holding them. She wished she had taken off her shoes. She was crying, but she wiped at the tears and held them in her hand. Bullets, glittering with emotion. She was afraid, but that could be a wall to protect them. She reached out to the stones, and she felt them speak back like a tuning fork tuned perfectly to the wavelength in her head.

  Ragged starlight. Emz whispered the words over and over so that they sounded like the wind in Havoc. She thought for a moment that it might blow her away. She was fragile as a dandelion clock. A tiny hand reached from her memory. The fingers curled around her finger. She was rooted here. Her roots reached out to anchor her to home, to twine themselves around the prone figure of Aurora Foundling and hold her close to the land.

  Crooked daylight. Borrowed moonlight. Ragged starlight.

  The plainchant of their voices breathed into the wind.

  The Red Wrangle. It was more than a bracelet binding her to the Gamekeeper. It had life. It spun itself outwards and took Nuala’s power with it. She snatched at it. The Wrangle let it crackle into the wind. The web of red thread spun back and forth, each part of it attaching itself to a stone in the circle. On and on, crissed and crossed above them, and she saw where she was caught at its heart. Nuala writhed as their power coursed through her, the Wrangle a conduit. She saw her own thin magic squirm inside it.

  Crooked daylight. Borrowed moonlight. Ragged starlight.

  The plan had been simple. To lure Nuala out and for Anna to go through her Flickerbook and find out the truth. Something had altered in the moment that Nuala Whitemain took the first bone pin from her pocket. Anna had been poised to raid Nuala’s Flickerbook for its secrets, but the bone pin mewled at her, and in her mind she saw not just the cat’s eye, but the glittering eyes of Mrs Massey, of Grandma Hettie, and she understood that sometimes a weapon might also be a tool.

  As she threaded the bone through the Red Wrangle, Anna felt her Strength surge. Above her, the red threads found each of her sister’s Strengths and together spooled out, warp and weft.

  “Don’t do this.” The words hissed around the stones. Was it a threat? Or a warning from their grandmother? The answer was there, in the corner of Anna’s eye.

  “Pity the father. Pity the son. Pity an old woman.” Anna’s voice was a barb. “Who was not alone in an old wood.” She wrenched at Nuala, the woman’s arm twisting so that her shoulder was poised to pop.

  “Pity you.” The Gamekeeper spoke the words like a curse.

  The Red Wrangle intensified Anna’s Strength. It was a simple thing to reach for the Flickerbook. Nuala struggled against it; jackdaws skittered skywards to be netted in the Wrangle. Anna saw the point in time, lightning marking the place, and she opened the banner of it.

  However the seven monoliths of stone had come to be placed, they were old, and they were out of Havoc, and now they basked in Anna’s Strength, amplifying it. The Flickerbook was no longer just for Anna — the images filtered into the web for all of the Witch Ways to see.

  Nuala Whitemain. Hair white as the lightning. Whisper. The Thinne man whip thin. Call me a storm. Take father. Take son. Lightning like a sword in a battle with the Rain. Rain. Rain. The rising ribs of the Knightstone Bridge carved out of light. Calum and Ethan driving onto the bridge. The switch-swatch of the windscreen wipers a heartbeat pounding. Take father. Take son.

  Lightning drawn down, a spear to strike them. Elemental. Metal clanked, buckled, as it hit the barrier. For a second, the spears of the barrier desperate metal fingers clutching, before a sound like a heart breaking as the car toppled.

  Hettie Way drenched, her foot stamping, her voice a plea. “I beg a boon, I beg a boon, I beg a boon of thee.”

  Lightning erased the Knightstone Bridge and illuminated Cob Cottage in the soft twilight of a summer evening.

  “Don’t do this.” Hettie Way, prone on the steps of the cottage, looking wan, her skin grey but her eyes fierce as the stars.

  “Don’t do this.” Nuala’s hand raised with a stone from the shore of Pike Lake. As the blow fell, lightning obliterated it, lit up Nuala Whitemain like a beacon.

  Don’t do this. Don’t do this. Don’t do this.

  The truth scorched through Anna. An agonised cry broke free, the last shard of her grief torn from her heart. Lightning lit up every part of her sorrow, and beside her she felt Charlie lurch, a cry from her mouth, her body shuddering with anger that rattled the earth. Emz threw back her head and the keening that wailed out carried ice, and the ragged starlight above them rattled like dice.

  Darkness began to pool over light, and Anna could not stop herself. She saw the black scrag of Nuala squirming within their power, reaching, her weak power still prickling towards Aurora Foundling.

  In that moment, Anna Way understood her grandmother’s warning at last. She was caught, with her sisters, in the vast and uncontrolled storm of their grief. The lightning of the Flickerbook struck again and again. Their hearts cracked and beat to its jagged rhythm. She could not reach beyond it.

  “Don’t do this,” Hettie repeated. The words’ instruction, calling out. “Don’t do this.”

  As Anna tried to focus, the lightning cracked through her mind once more, and she felt the fall as steep and sure as if she had been in the car on that night. Charlie felt the stone as it hit their grandmother. Emz saw three women silent. The first carrying a baby in a bundle, the second winding silver thread onto a bobbin. The third, looking across at Emz with a nod and no more beneath the rain. rain. rain.

  Darkness shadowed everything and raged above Aurora, distant, a leaf on the floor of Havoc.

  The wind rose. The trees began to rattle. Not just the ones edging the stone circle.

  Crooked daylight. Borrowed moonlight. Ragged starlight.

  Nuala could feel it through the earth — all of Havoc turned against her. She waited for the blow from the Ways, but it did not come. The darkness raged above, splintered by the lightning from the bridge on that fateful Halloween. And yet, though the rags and bones of Thinne’s power still seeped out of her, the darkness did not yet touch her. It ravelled itself around the Ways. Above her, the Flickerbook of her crimes played, and she saw their grief and that the darkness of it swallowed them.

  She still had time. Nuala scratched the fingers of her right hand along the ground, knotting them into the stray and muddied end of Aurora Foundling’s plaited hair. She pulled tight, saw the crackle, a moment of success, and saw that it was not the power from Aurora but only more of her own power shattering. Aurora’s hair beg
an to spark and crackle with black bursts of energy in Nuala’s numbing fingers. The red ribbon binding it singed and curled and was ashes blowing on the breeze. The hair, unfurled, freed.

  Nuala felt it draining at the dregs of Thinne’s stolen magic and railed against it. Every bone in her body clattered but still did not break. The last of the black crackle of herself splintered; she was nearly out of time. She felt where the Gamekeepers’ Strengths channelled through her, the whole of Havoc mustered within it and beyond it. They were not coming for her. They were still lost in their darkness.

  Crooked daylight. Borrowed moonlight. Ragged starlight.

  She reached again for Aurora’s hair, wound it tighter in her fist. She saw where Aurora’s white hand was flung out, beside her. If she could break just one finger, it would be enough. Nuala felt the grind of her own bones as she strained to reach Aurora’s hand. Her shoulder popped, and the last of Thinne’s magic ran ragged into the wind. But she held on. The girl’s skin was soft and cool. The wild magic of the Ways flayed around her, but she breathed in deep. A thunderhead of grief and sorrow. The lightning of the bridge taken up by the Ways, illuminating sorrow and fury. She had only moments before their grief cauterised into the white heat of vengeance.

  Crooked daylight. Borrowed moonlight. Ragged starlight.

  Nuala panicked now. She would not be taken by Havoc. With all her will, she focused on the power from the three women. She looked for the cracks in it and reached, empty now of her black crackle; she grabbed for her shards, stabbed and sliced it into the daylight, moonlight, starlight. There must be a way. She could take their power. She was a thief — heartbeats, souls, power. Take it. Take it.

  Crooked daylight. Borrowed moonlight. Ragged starlight.

  The sounds coiling around the stones; the stones ringing, echoing the lament.