Helena Rookwood
The Hagstone
The River Witch Prequel
First published by Helena Rookwood in 2017
Copyright © Helena Rookwood, 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy
Find out more at reedsy.com
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1
CHAPTER ONE
She had been riding for days now, driving herself and the horse to near exhaustion as she grew closer to her goal. But it would be worth it, Madeleine reminded herself over and over again. Keeping up this relentless pace would be worth it if she could return to the Iron Court with a treasure of such incomparable value. This was going to be a theft that went down in history. And for a historian that was more remarkable than any gold or riches.
It was rare that Madeleine left the Iron City these days. She had grown comfortable in the only city that had been rebuilt since the world of technology had crumbled, and her research had kept her tied to her desk for a long time now. But now that she was outside of the city walls, breathing in the open air, Madeleine was enjoying herself. She gave a wicked smile and urged the horse to go faster still.
Madeleine raced through a world reclaimed by the earth, passing countless crumbling ruins that might at one time have been somewhere significant, but which were now taken over by trees and moss and wildflowers. Occasionally she passed a smallholding, built into the old ruins or constructed anew of wood and mud and stone, but these were few and far between. Madeleine gave them a wide berth, eager to push onwards, but she felt a twinge of regret at not stopping to meet with the people there. It was so infrequent that she got to speak to people outside of the Iron City.
As she passed them, Madeleine found herself wondering what it must have been like to have lived here long ago. It gave her a strange thrill to imagine what it must have been like when the technology, the metal and the weaponry that the Iron City so ruthlessly stole – or rather collected, as the Court would put it – had been freely available to everyone. She struggled to picture these ruins whole again, or the vast green lands she was travelling through covered with snaking roads, with vehicles that would have allowed her to complete her long journey in a day. She wondered whether it had been better then; whether everywhere had been like the Iron City.
And she wondered whether in the time before the human world was wrapped in metal and glass and iron, it had looked similar to the way it did now. What it had been like to live when the fae, who the Iron Court so feared returning, had stalked the earth alongside man. Driven by the taste of a task almost finished, Madeleine raced furiously and joyfully across Bretan until she finally reached its most eastern parts.
The smallholdings Madeleine passed grew even more infrequent, and the earth itself seemed to be growing softer underfoot. The further east she travelled the more the land flattened out, until the hills disappeared altogether and the sea began slowly creeping ashore via a web of tiny channels that wriggled their way inland. The wood everywhere was damp, so she had to use her magic to keep any kind of fire burning, muttering the learned words softly under her breath until the wood finally caught. The smell of the sea seemed to permeate everything. And yet something about this strange place charmed her.
Perhaps it was the heat, Madeleine thought, which made her like the place so; or just that it was somewhere new. Or perhaps it was the thrill of it, the sense that she was drawing closer to the end of her search. But she had never seen such endless skies, and Madeleine's wild blood roared in her veins as she urged the horse on.
She just knew that what she was looking for was here somewhere, on these strange shifting shores. A treasure that she was going to steal from the Earth itself.
The hagstone.
2
CHAPTER TWO
The wind whipped across Madeleine's face, and she breathed in the sweet, heavy air as it rushed over her skin. But this salt breeze was familiar to her now.
Madeleine leaned out of the stern of the boat with her eyes closed, allowing the wind to ruffle her hair and her clothes, coating her skin and her eyelashes with flecks of water. The sun was hot, as it always seemed to be in this part of the country, and Madeleine knew that the splashes would soon dry out to fine crusts of white salt. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and assessed the water levels on the foreshore. She had long since learnt how to read the tides. She had a little while longer to make her catch and get back to shore before the water retreated and left her in the thick wash of mud that sat beneath this tidal river.
Madeleine had proved to be particularly adept at fishing, and looking in the bucket beside her she knew that she had probably caught enough for the day. She ought to get back to her partner and her daughter. But Madeleine loved being out on the river, loved the utter contentment she felt when she was aboard their little boat, and so she resolved that she would catch just one more fish before returning home. She lowered the line again and hovered intently above it, waiting for the slight tug at her hands that would tell her that a fish had taken the bait.
It was still baffling to her, how she had settled so easily into this rural bliss.
Madeleine supposed that Fraser was to blame. She blamed the openness she had seen in his face when they had first met. She blamed the tanned skin and easy strength of a man who worked outdoors, which had allowed him to scoop her tenderly from the ground when she had been thrown by the horse. She blamed the gentleness and humour with which he tended to her while she recovered. Madeleine had fallen in love with him the moment she had seen him, the simple fisherman who had never left these sun-kissed saltmarshes.
The awaited tug came on the end of her rod, and she hauled the line back in. A chub, and a large one too. Although Madeleine had always resisted using her magic to help with her catch, she still did seem to always have unusually good luck. The other villagers said that she must be river-blessed, albeit with some reluctance to recognise her skill. She'd had considerable difficulty in befriending the people here. The village was so remote that they rarely saw strangers, and instinct had told them that this new face was not to be trusted. And when it became clear that she and Fraser were besotted with one another it had made things worse still, the village having always hoped that their handsome fisherman would settle down with the dairy farmer's daughter.
But Fraser loved Madeleine, despite her strangeness and a past she refused to share with him, and ignored the warnings of the rest of the village. He had seen something in her wicked, thieving soul which he thought was good and beautiful and worth clinging on to with everything he had, and Madeleine had responded to the trust he placed in her. Whatever kind of soul she had left to offer, she had given it to him, the man who made her heart beat faster and who sent flickers of pleasure through her with just the trace of his fingertips.
Soon after Madeleine had recovered from her fall she had resolved that she would give up her search for the treasure she had come here to find, in favour of Fraser and the daughter she soon fell pregnant with. She loved her partner and her daughter fiercely, and she was sure tha
t she would never leave these eastern shores of Bretan again. Madeleine didn't dare think about what would happen if her old life ever caught up with her. She prayed that the Iron Court would never find her in this obscure patch of estuary, that they would never connect the pet name “Maude” that she went by here with the “Madeleine” who had failed to return to the Iron City all those years ago.
Not liking to dwell on such concerns, Madeleine put the chub into the bucket with the other fish she had caught and directed her boat back towards the shore. She was pleased with her catch, and as she drifted gently over the water she felt her worries evaporate.
As the moorings came into sight, Madeleine spotted Fraser's mother Ondine waiting for her on the banks, her darling Tabitha by her side. The sun had turned the wet mud at the river's edge to a dazzling gold, but Madeleine could still make out their faces if she squinted, and she lifted her arm to wave to them. Tabitha could contain herself no longer then, and pulled away from her grandmother's hand to wade out into the river. She had no hesitation in swimming for the boat, and Ondine did nothing to stop her.
Madeleine sometimes wondered whether it was herself or Ondine who was responsible for Tabitha's… quirks. When Tabitha was very young, Madeleine had assumed that it must be her own blood that set her daughter apart from the rest of the village. But as Tabitha had got older her devotion to the river had grown stronger, and that was something she could only have inherited from Ondine. Tabitha was hardly ever out of the river if she could help it. She had learned to swim before she could walk, she could hold her breath underwater for even longer than most of the adults, and she chattered incessantly to frogs and dragonflies and sometimes even the puddles that pooled up when the river retreated with the tide. Everyone always commented on how remarkable it was that Tabitha had learned to swim and talk at such a young age, but Madeleine noticed something nervous in their expressions when they did. For Tabitha certainly was strange, and, in her own way, Madeleine was too. She saw the villagers comparing mother and daughter, wondering what strange blood she had brought into the village. They never thought it might be because of Ondine.
Madeleine also noticed that the other children in the village gave Tabitha a wide berth. Tabitha's ability to out-swim children who were far older than her, her enthusiastic retelling of the stories that Madeleine encouraged her to read, and the series of inexplicable events that seemed to trail behind her had not endeared her to the village children. No, that wasn't fair – Tabitha was a village child, Madeleine checked herself. She wasn't like Madeleine in that regard; she had been born here. No matter how different Tabitha was, she had grown up here the same as the rest of them.
Ondine at least didn't seem to mind that her granddaughter was turning out to be a bit peculiar. As far as she was concerned, Tabitha was perfect, and her quirks were to be celebrated, not worried about. Madeleine wasn't sure whether she should be concerned that Ondine had so very happily allowed the tiny girl to wade out into the river and start swimming like a fish towards her mother.
Madeleine slowed the boat, taking in the sail and using the oars to bring the vessel to bob in one place, anxious that Tabitha might collide with the boat or hit her head. But she needn't have worried. Her daughter was already gracefully hauling herself out of the water and into the boat, her eyes bright as she rushed to smother Madeleine with muddy, salty kisses.
“Mama!” she cried, “Look at how many fish you've caught!”
“It was a good tide,” Madeleine replied. “It brought in lots of fish.”
“Even more than Papa caught yesterday,” Tabitha said in awe, hanging with her head over the bucket to watch the wet, gleaming fish still wriggling as the life slowly went out of them.
“Careful not to spill them out again,” Madeleine warned, and she set to rowing the two of them back to shore. Tabitha obediently left the bucket alone, and came to sit cross-legged in front of her mother.
“I've been downriver with Nana today,” she said. “She taught me to make little boats out of twigs and long grass. We sent them sailing to find you.” Tabitha twisted about, looking for any sign of one of the tiny vessels that might have reached Madeleine. Her face fell when she didn't spot any sign of one on deck. “They must have got lost,” she said unhappily.
Madeleine's heart clenched. She hated to see her daughter unhappy for any reason. And then, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a miniature sail bobbing alongside the boat…
Trying to shake off how odd this was, Madeleine hauled the oars back onto the boat for a moment, and reached down to scoop the tiny boat from the water.
“Here,” she said, offering it to Tabitha. “Your boat was obviously just waiting for you to arrive.”
Tabitha's face lit up.
“Nana said one would find you!” Tabitha very carefully took the boat from her mother's upturned palm. “I'll keep it here while you're rowing,” she said solemnly, “but then you must take it back. We made it for you.”
“Of course!” Madeleine said. “Now mind you look after my present.”
Tabitha unfolded her legs and set them out in a V-shape in front of her, popping the little boat in between so that it couldn't roll off the deck while it dried out. She continued chattering to Madeleine about her afternoon with her grandmother until the boat bumped against the shore, and she scrambled onto the banks to where Ondine was patiently waiting.
“Look!” Tabitha said breathlessly, holding up the little boat to show her.
Ondine seemed quite unsurprised to see that the little boat had found its way to Madeleine. “I told you it would find her,” she told Tabitha with a wink, and then nodded to Madeleine. “Evening, Maude.”
Madeleine felt the little burn of jealousy she always did when she Ondine and Tabitha seemed to share in something that she wasn't part of. She had sometimes wondered whether Ondine might be a witch and whether the blame for Tabitha's peculiar nature might lie in her paternal heritage after all. But witch magic passed down the female line, so Madeleine knew that this was impossible and that her suspicions were likely the result of her own jealousy. So she ignored her mistrustful thoughts and pulled the boat firmly ashore, tugging at the ropes to secure the boat to the mooring. It was nice that Ondine and Tabitha both had the river in their blood, she told herself firmly. And besides, she should be grateful to Ondine, who had welcomed Madeleine even before she had given her the granddaughter she so adored. She had made her feel a part of this secluded, sunshiney corner of Bretan, and now Madeleine had a perfect, beautiful family.
Madeleine was happy here. She was sure she was.
3
CHAPTER THREE
“Snow White and Rose Red knocked the snow from the bear's back, making their own hands cold as they swept the ice from his fur. The bear grumbled, and moved closer to the fireplace, but the two girls were not afraid. They fetched more logs for the fire to help keep the bear warm, and found a big red blanket for the bear to lie on...”
As Tabitha read aloud in her high, halting voice, Madeleine leaned against the wall and stared out at the trees and the meadows and the beds of rushes. From this height, she could just about see the glint of the river in the distance. It was another hot day, and the sun had turned the grasses yellow, so that everything that Madeleine could see was in lines of blue and gold.
The library they were in had been abandoned long ago, and Madeleine guessed that it had remained unused for many centuries afterwards. The building itself, which must once have been a proud concrete column with wide glass windows offering views of the surrounding area, was in a state of total disrepair. The windows were long gone, the concrete exterior crumbling and unstable in places where the surrounding woodland had started to reclaim it from the ground up. And as for the books; well, Madeleine thought it was a miracle that any had survived at all. Most had been destroyed by wind or rain or snow, exposed as they were to the elements now that the windows were gone. It was only those which had been fortunate enough to be shelved in the very mid
dle of each floor which had survived.
When Ondine had first slyly mentioned to Madeleine that she might like to visit the university ruins – that she might find some fodder for the imagination in the library there – Madeleine had done her best to rescue the books that were still legible. She spent days and weeks piling them up inside what remained of the concrete stairwell, and then when she ran out of space there, used the damaged books to created hollows in which their luckier relatives could be stored. But there were so many that were beyond saving, and Madeleine mourned them greatly. Most of the libraries had eventually done away with physical books altogether, storing everything digitally. When the technology had failed, all of that information had been lost with it. And so books once again became an important and rare source of knowledge. The books here were those which had been considered valuable or beautiful enough to archive before the digital world had fallen, and now even some of these were lost forever. While Maude took the practical steps necessary to preserve the remaining books, Madeleine the historian wept.
Still, despite their depleted numbers, Madeleine was grateful for the number of intact books within her reach. She was grateful that Ondine had sent her here. Because as well as having them for her own pleasure, access to these books also meant that she could teach Tabitha to read. In spite of Fraser's reservations about what use reading would be to their daughter, Madeleine had been adamant that Tabitha should learn. No matter that it was of no practical use; her daughter simply must love stories just as much as she did. And of course, because she liked everything that her mother did, Tabitha had taken very eagerly to her reading. She learnt quickly, adored new stories, and devoured books as hungrily as Madeleine did.
The Hagstone Page 1
