by Lari Don
“I can’t hold it much longer,” gasped Innes. “It’s so heavy, it’s going to crush him!”
Theo said, “But it’s not heavy, that’s the point. It’s not weight, it’s energy. You have to feel it differently, you have to treat it differently.”
“All I can feel is something that’s mangling my hands and flattening my friend!”
Molly said, “Let me.”
She slid her hands between the flickers of light and the ribcage of the shaking sphinx. She felt Atacama’s warm fur on the backs of her hands and the light’s sparkling coolness on the palms.
Theo said, “It’s not heavy, Molly. Don’t use strength or force. That makes it defensive. Just ease it up.”
Innes said, “Careful, don’t—”
“Shut up, Innes!” snapped Theo. “Get out of the way and let Molly do it.”
Innes flinched, but kept his voice steady. “Do you have it, Molly? Can you stop it crushing him?”
“Yes, I think so.” The wall of light was playing gently on her palms and she was sure it was easy to persuade.
Innes took a deep breath and pulled his hands away.
Molly felt the pressure of the light increase. But it wasn’t painful or heavy, just intense.
She heard Theo behind her. “Now I want you to—”
Molly said, “Yes, I know.” She raised her hands and the light danced upwards, wafting like a silk scarf, lifting smoothly off the sphinx.
Innes dragged Atacama away.
Molly asked, “Will I keep lifting, or let it down now?”
Theo said, “Can you possibly lift it off the whole house? It’s the final layer.”
Molly gave the light a gentle push, and it floated over the roof and out of sight.
She turned round. “Is Atacama ok?”
Innes, Beth and Theo were staring at her.
“Is he ok?”
The sphinx sat up, nodded his thanks to Molly and began to wash his ears.
“Are you ok?” said Innes. “That was too heavy for me. But you just—”
“I’m fine. You probably did most of the hard work, Innes, I just gave it one last little shove.” She didn’t look at Beth.
As Theo, Atacama and Beth walked into the house, Molly grabbed Innes’s left arm and pulled his hand towards her. She saw red and purple marks across his palm. Burns and bruises. She showed him her hands. They were unmarked.
“That felt completely natural. As natural as being a hare. Considerably more natural than being a caterpillar. But Beth… Beth says she can’t be friends with a witch.”
“If Beth wants to be your friend, she has to be friends with who you are. And she’s almost forgiven me for cursing my dad. She still hassles me about it, obviously, but she has to keep talking to me, in order to hassle me. She’s a tree and they’re not as flexible as water.” He smiled at her. “We have a box to find, an army to defeat and a Keeper to stop. Once we’ve done all that, we can worry about the really difficult stuff, like Beth’s attitude to magic.”
And they walked into the witch’s house.
Chapter Twenty-two
Molly and Innes followed their friends through the unlocked door, into a big entrance hall floored with black and red tiles.
“Let’s fetch all Mrs Sharpe’s wooden boxes,” said Innes.
“The box we want is smooth pine and has knotholes on the top,” said Beth. “It’ll be easy to recognise.”
“Easy for you. The rest of us should just pick up any wooden container bigger than a hankie box and smaller than a coffin.”
Innes and Theo ran upstairs; Beth, Molly and Atacama split the rooms downstairs.
Molly stepped into a room overflowing with books. Every shelf was filled with books, and the floor was covered with stacks of books. Some were brightly coloured modern novels, most were old and leather-bound. She glanced at the titles on the nearest shelf, and noticed the red spine of a book called The Beginner’s Guide to Curses. Molly grinned. She could have written that herself.
She looked at the gleaming books beside it:
The Liar’s Guide to Promises
The Musician’s Guide to Silence
The Shapeshifter’s Guide to Running Away
The Ninja’s Guide to Knitting Patterns
The Writer’s Guide to Spellchasing
The Magician’s Guide to Circles and Tangents
At the very end of the shelf, she saw:
The Witch’s Guide to Magical Combat
She pulled the book out, wondering if it would be more help against Mr Crottel than an exhibit from a tourist attraction, and flicked through it. Each page had a different spell written in blood-red letters at the top:
How to defeat with fire
How to defeat with ice
How to defeat with barbs and blades
How to crush your opponent with granite
How to bury your opponent for 1001 years
How to humiliate your opponent in seven simple steps
The pictures of combat and victory at the bottom of each page were small and faded, but when Molly peered closer at them, she could hear faint moans and screams.
She shivered, and decided that if she was going to defeat Mr Crottel in magical combat, she would win with her own skills, not with a witch’s power, not with spells like these.
She closed the book and put it on the shelf. She turned her back on the guidebooks and looked round the room. The only wood she could see was the shelving, and there were no boxes.
She walked into the hall. Beth was standing in the doorway of the room opposite, shaking her head. “Lots of half-finished knitting, no pine boxes.”
Atacama nudged a varnished wooden box through the kitchen doorway.
Beth said, “No, that’s made of oak, can’t you tell the difference?”
Innes and Theo came down the stairs, Innes with one big box in his arms, Theo with two smaller ones.
Innes’s box was carved with the sinuous shapes of snakes and monkeys. Beth stroked it and shook her head. “That’s an exotic wood, not native to Scotland.”
Theo showed the two plain boxes he’d found. Beth shook her head again. “Far too old.”
“Let’s try the bunkhouse,” said Innes. “There are lots of cupboards in the kitchen.”
“Or the shop, with all those shelves,” suggested Atacama.
“We’ve checked them already,” said Molly. “There’s just the classroom left.”
They walked out of the witch’s house, towards the barn where they’d met last year, and pushed open the red door.
The barn was much colder than it had been in the autumn. Beth flicked the switch, and the lights came on with a buzz, dim and flickering, only illuminating the centre of the big classroom.
The room contained desks and chairs. No boxes.
Molly pointed at the row of cupboards built into one wall, each with words stencilled on the door:
Knit your own underwear workshop supplies
Teabag workshop supplies
Curse-lifting workshop supplies
There were a dozen cupboards, each for a different workshop.
Beth opened the nearest one and lifted out balls of wool, bundles of knitting needles and a box of scissors.
Molly went straight to the curse-lifting cupboard.
“It can’t be in there,” said Innes. “We saw her open that cupboard to get maps and worksheets. We’d have noticed a box.”
Molly flicked up the latch anyway, and saw shelves filled with scrolls, paper and pens. The bottom shelf was bending slightly under the weight of a piled-up metal chain.
Molly crouched down and looked more closely. The chain was wound round and round a pale wooden box.
“Beth, is this made of pine?”
Beth reached in and touched the smooth corner of the box, just visible past the loops of shining metal.
“Yes. This is a tree from my woods. It’s Uncle Pete’s work. We’ve found it…”
Molly carefully picked up
the chained box and carried it to a desk.
They all stared at it. The box was tightly wrapped in layers of metal links. It would be impossible to lift the lid without removing the chain. And the chain was held together by a large silver padlock.
“We need the key.” Molly turned to look in the cupboard.
“It’s not in there,” said a quiet voice from a shadowy corner at the back of the classroom.
Molly stood still as most of her friends surged past her towards the corner.
Innes dragged Snib into the light. Beth kicked her feet from under her and pushed her to the floor. Atacama crouched at her shoulder and bared his teeth.
Molly and Theo glanced at each other and walked towards the angry group gathered around the crow-girl.
Molly looked down at Snib. She was red-eyed, pink-nosed, white-cheeked and shaking.
Beth said, “Little sneak. Little spy. Little traitor.”
“I am a sneak and a spy, I admit that. I’m about to be a traitor too, but not to you. I’m about to betray Corbie.”
“But you were spying for Corbie,” said Atacama.
“Yes. Because he’d have kept me in the ranks of his army if I hadn’t agreed to spy for him. Spying on you gave me the chance to move around freely and find my own way to save the curse-hatched from Corbie’s plans. I’m sorry that I had to tell him about the star iron, and about Theo’s powerlessness, to keep his trust. But now I’m here, ready to do… what I’ve always known I have to do.”
“Don’t listen to her,” said Innes. “She’s convinced us once before. We can’t fall for it again.”
“Let’s use that chain to tie her up and keep her out of the way,” said Beth.
“Use that chain, against me?” Snib laughed, a weak panicky giggle. “You can’t take the chain off the box without me. And you need to open the box, so you need me.”
She sat up.
Beth put her black-booted foot on Snib’s chest and shoved her back down. “Stay down, spy.” Beth looked round at the circle of faces above the crow-girl. “What should we do with her?”
“Listen to her,” said Molly. “Listen to what she has to say about the chain and the box, then make up our minds.”
Theo nodded. “Tell us what you know, crow.”
Snib said, “There’s something locked in the box.”
“We already know that,” said Beth.
“Something vital to Corbie and his army.”
“We know that too,” said Atacama.
“Something that could defeat both Estelle and Corbie.”
“Yeah, we worked that out as well,” said Innes.
“If you know so much, do you know how to open the box?”
“Cut the chain?” said Innes.
“No. The chain will only break when the key is inserted and the padlock is opened. And the chain isn’t just keeping the box closed; the chain is also the link between curses and crows. When the chain is unlocked, every single link will be broken and whatever is in the box will be set free.”
“Do you know what’s inside?” asked Molly.
“No, but I know it’s sad and lonely. I know it’s been even sadder and lonelier since last October, when you killed my mother and released the Keeper from her babyhood. And I know I’m the only one who can free it.”
“Why you?” asked Theo.
Snib looked at the heavy boot on her chest, then looked up at Beth. “Can I move, just a little?”
Beth nodded.
Snib pulled up her sleeve to show the key on her arm. “The curse that keeps it trapped in the box is the curse that hatched me. The caster worded the magic so that when I break the curse, I also break the link between curses and crows, and free all my brothers and sisters. I just have to use the key to open the lock.”
“But Snib, if you break your own curse, you’ll die,” said Molly.
“I know.”
“She might not, actually,” said Theo. “If the wider link between all curses and all curse-hatched breaks before the ending of her own specific curse can kill her, she might survive. But that link will only break because she’s breaking her own curse. I wonder which breakage the curse arc will recognise first? It’s an interesting magical conundrum…”
“It’s not interesting,” said Molly. “It’s Snib’s life. It’s too much of a risk.”
“It’s a risk I have to take,” said Snib. “Someone must stop Corbie and Estelle, and someone must break the link between the crows and the curses. That link to dark magic isn’t our strength, it’s our weakness. And I have the key to break it.”
Beth shook her head. “That box contains something powerful. We can’t let this treacherous snivelling crow anywhere near it.”
“Surely we don’t need her to open the box,” said Innes. “There are plenty of tools on this farm; we can find a saw and cut the chain.”
Molly said, “But Mrs Sharpe told me to ‘ask the crow’. She wanted us to involve Snib. Mrs Sharpe set this magic up and we have to trust her.”
Beth laughed. “Trust a witch?”
“Trust Mrs Sharpe, yes,” said Atacama. “Trust Snib, no.”
“I think we have to trust them both,” said Molly.
“We don’t have time to argue,” said Snib. “I have to do this right now. The Promise Keeper is on her way to Stone Egg Wood. Corbie has invited her to a feast, and once she’s there he will ask her to charge up the best curses to create the strongest curse-empowered monsters for his army. If she agrees, he’ll hide the star iron far from her, to keep her safe. If she refuses, if she wants to keep charging up curses that amuse her rather than useful ones, he’ll threaten her with the star iron. He’ll use it to control her and all her power. So there’s no time to debate. Let me up, let me open the box, let me free whatever’s inside.”
“What if this crow is still working for Corbie?” said Beth. “What if she frees something that attacks us?”
“She’s risking death by unlocking the chain,” said Molly. “She’s taking a much bigger risk than we are. If you’re all scared of what’s in the box, you can wait at a safe distance, and I’ll stay here with Snib.” Molly looked at Beth. “Though if you stay, your healing powers might help her recover after she breaks her own curse.”
Beth shrugged, and lifted her boot from the crow-girl’s chest.
“No,” said Snib. “Don’t waste time on me. I will either fall when the curse that hatched me breaks, or the link will sever in time to save me. I don’t know which, but I do know there’s no time to waste.”
She sat up, then stood up.
“When I’ve unlocked the chain, please take whatever is in the box and get to Stone Egg Wood fast. That’s why I waited here. I knew that whoever was clever enough to work out where the box was and why it was important, might also be clever enough to use what’s inside to defeat Corbie and the Keeper. And I needed you to arrive before I opened the box, so that if this is the end of me, you can use the contents to stop Corbie’s plans. So please Molly, please all of you, promise that you won’t waste a moment on me. Promise that you’ll leave me here, to die or recover, on my own.”
Molly looked at Snib’s tear-filled eyes and shaking hands. She thought about the courage it would take for Snib to break the curse that had hatched her, the curse that kept her alive. Molly had to give Snib whatever she needed right now.
So Molly said, “Yes, I promise.”
Theo frowned at her, but Molly nodded at him. Theo said, “I promise too.”
Innes shrugged. “Ok. I promise.”
Atacama said, “I promise.”
Beth nodded too. “Easy done. I promise not to waste a minute on you.”
Snib smiled but Molly saw that her hands were trembling even more. Maybe she hadn’t wanted them to make that promise after all.
Snib walked towards the chain-wrapped box. She pulled off her ripped cardigan, to reveal her thin bare arms. One covered in pale bruises from her fall, the other with a long key-shape shining like a burn from wr
ist to elbow.
Theo asked eagerly, “Is the curse image coded into your skin? How do you take it off to use it?”
“I don’t take it off. It’s part of me. I am the key.”
“How do you know all this? Is it written down in a book of curses, or are you told as you grow, or—?”
“I just know it. Our curses bring us out of the eggs, so they’re part of us. I’ve woken every morning feeling the loneliness of whatever is trapped in this box; I’ve gone to sleep every night knowing I’m a prisoner of this curse too. Now I’m going to free my curse victim, and break the link between my family and curses forever.”
She lifted the silver padlock with her left hand, and pushed her right index finger into the keyhole.
The key on her arm glowed.
The padlock opened and the chain started to break.
One by one, the links started to crack, to shatter, to explode. The chain slipped from the box and fell to the floor in a heavy rain of broken metal ovals.
As the weight of the chains slid away, the box lid began to rise.
As the box lid rose, Snib fell.
With the padlock in her hand, she slid to the floor, among the fractured links. The key on her arm flared brightly, then faded away.
Snib sighed, then her eyes closed.
Chapter Twenty-three
Molly knelt beside Snib, among the fallen links, which were still cracking and popping like seeds under a grill. Had Snib broken her own link fast enough to save her life?
Molly put her hand on the crow-girl’s throat. She couldn’t feel a pulse, though she wasn’t sure if she was feeling in the right place.
Molly looked up. “Come on! Help her.”
“No,” said Innes. “We promised not to. We must use what’s in the box, right now. That’s what we promised to do.”
“Don’t be daft,” said Molly. “That wasn’t a promise I ever intended to keep.”
