The Witch's Guide to Magical Combat

by Lari Don

Chapter Twenty-eight

  Molly had shifted into a hare. There had been no flash of heat in her spine. She’d just shifted, gently and naturally, into her other self.

  She ran across the moor, stretching out into the power and strength of her perfect sprinter’s body.

  When she reached the tunnel entrance, she paused, she remembered her slow heavy human legs, she imagined the best form for speaking to her friends and she walked into the tunnel as a girl.

  Just inside the tunnel, she found Beth, looking out anxiously. “Molly! Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine. I defeated Mr Crottel and forced him to lift the curse. I didn’t use any magic spells, I just used my hare form, my girl form and that nasty collar. So I’m not cursed any more.”

  Beth gave her a hug. “Thank you for not becoming a witch.”

  “But Beth… I am still a shapeshifter. I ran back here as a hare. My curse has gone, but my shapeshifting hasn’t. I know you wanted me to lose all the magic, but I don’t think I can lose the hare. I don’t want to lose the hare.”

  Beth smiled. “Innes has been my friend since we were toddlers. And he’s a shapeshifter, a predator, a monster and frequently very annoying, so you choosing to run as a hare occasionally won’t bother me at all!”

  They walked towards the wooden doors, where Innes, Theo, Atacama and Snib were waiting.

  “Are you ok, Molly?” asked Innes.

  She grinned. “I’m not cursed any more. But what’s happening in the wood?”

  Theo pushed the doors wide open.

  Molly saw shattered trees, crushed nests, the earth churned up like one of Mrs Sharpe’s fields, and food from the feast scattered everywhere. She also saw lots of birds and a straggling of fabled beasts, many of them limping, drooping and wrapped in bandages. But no one was fighting.

  The friends moved to the side of the doorway, making space for groups of walking wounded to leave the wood.

  Corbie stumbled out, followed by Mickle leading an escort of young black eagles. Corbie said to Snib, “I’ve resigned and I won’t oppose your election as leader. But perhaps I’d be allowed to come back to the wood, once your loyal lieutenants confirm that I’ve returned the star iron to its original owners in the far north?”

  Snib replied, “Of course, Corbie.”

  Theo whispered to her and she nodded. Theo waved a hand and suddenly Corbie was wearing a black cloak. Corbie grinned, raised his arms, shifted into a glossy black crow and flew off, followed closely by the larger birds.

  Snib bit her lip as she watched Corbie swoop from the tunnel into the light outside.

  Then Theo touched her gently on the shoulder, and she was wearing a cloak too. “Everyone will get their wings back,” he said.

  Snib sighed, shifted into a crow and dived around the tunnel, somersaulting in the air. Then she landed on the ground, on her girl’s feet, and said quietly, “Thanks.”

  As Snib tried to hide her grin and look serious, like the proper leader of a whole flock, Mr Milne limped through the doorway.

  He walked right up to Innes. Molly stepped forward to defend her friend, but Beth pulled her back.

  Molly saw that one side of Mr Milne’s face was now smooth and unscarred, but the other was still marked with painful-looking wounds.

  Mr Milne said, “Your dryad and magician friends have proved they can heal scars on my skin and scars in my memory. If your friends promise to remove all my scars, then I promise to stop hunting near our rivers. As for my revenge, Innes, I’ve decided that when you get home tonight, you must tell your mother – all by yourself – that you’ve been lying to her for months, and that you cursed your own father.”

  Innes turned pale. “Really? I’d almost prefer you kept hunting me…”

  Mr Milne grabbed Innes’s shoulders, and all the kelpie’s friends moved forward to protect him.

  But Mr Milne grinned, hugged his son tightly and said, “I know. That’s why you’re going tell her. See you at tea-time.” Then he limped away.

  Innes smiled, then looked at Molly. “It was easier to get him to agree to a truce once he knew I could beat him in a fight.”

  Mrs Sharpe walked through the doorway. “Thank you, young sphinx, for cutting me free from that woolly curse. I’ll be more careful with curses and spells from now on. Maybe I should just stick to growing tatties and neeps.”

  “But it was your cleverly cursed chain, and the bird it trapped in the box, that allowed us to defeat Corbie,” said Beth. “Please don’t stop casting spells.”

  “Don’t stop your workshops either,” said Molly. “They’re really useful.”

  “I suppose it will be safe for me to run my curse-lifting workshop in October. But I certainly won’t hold any more knit-your-own-undies workshops. I never want to wear wool again.”

  As Mrs Sharpe strode down the tunnel, Estelle stood shining in the doorway. “Thank you all for returning me to myself. I’m embarrassed to have caused so much trouble, so before I return home, I’ll use some of the extra power I foolishly stored in those mirrors to fix the stone trees.” She smiled at Molly. “And thanks for tricking me into grabbing your gift. We’re both much happier now.” The Keeper walked back into the wood.

  “A gift!” gasped Molly. “We still don’t have a birthday present for Rosalind.”

  “If we want to arrive at the party before she blows out her candles,” said Beth, “we’d better go now.”

  Molly frowned, then looked round the door into the wood. “I know what we can give her!” She stepped into Stone Egg Wood. Estelle was sitting cross-legged, chatting to a small brown-black crow, as she concentrated a fraction of her energy on lifting the nearest fallen tree. By her feet was an upside-down nest.

  Molly turned the nest over and found a beautiful white egg, gleaming with lines of silver light.

  She picked up the egg and rejoined her friends. “The eggs won’t hatch now that the crows aren’t linked to curses, so we can give one to Rosalind as a toy. And I just found this gorgeous silvery egg!”

  Molly, Innes, Beth, Atacama and Theo walked along the tunnel, heading for the bright winter sunlight and a birthday party. Molly stopped. “Snib, aren’t you coming with us?”

  “I’m not invited.”

  Beth said, “It’s not my birthday, but the party’s in my woods, so I can invite you. Come on.”

  And they all flew, on Theo’s carpet, back to Craigvenie.

  ***

  When they could see Beth’s wood, Molly zipped the egg into her pocket and said, “Race you, Innes?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Don’t you want to know if you can win, now that I’m not cursed?”

  As she leapt from the low-flying carpet, she considered racing him as a hare, but she’d won as a hare so many times. She wanted to find out what she could do now that shapeshifting was her choice not her curse.

  She wondered about cheetahs and racehorses. But she decided to go back to where it all began.

  Molly remembered a pursuit across playing fields, months ago, when she’d first become a hare. She remembered being chased, and then she imagined the challenge of chasing.

  Molly landed on the ground as a slim sharp greyhound.

  Innes landed on heavy hooves beside her.

  They raced.

  Molly enjoyed the smooth stride of her four equally long legs and the single-minded focus of a hunter.

  She beat Innes to the edge of the woods, easily, with several paces to spare.

  Then she shifted back and stood up on two human legs.

  Innes laughed. “Well done, again.”

  The rest of them floated to the ground and Theo said, “So you’ve decided to claim your magic after all?”

  Molly shook her head. “Shapeshifting is the only magic I plan to use. Unless,” she looked round at her five friends, “unless any of you are ever in trouble, and need me to chase more complicated spells…”

  Innes was still laughing.

  Theo, Snib and Atacama w
ere smiling at Molly.

  But Beth was frowning.

  The dryad took a deep breath, then said, “I suppose I can get used to you running about in a few other shapes and sizes…” She linked arms with Molly and led them all into the woods.

  They followed the glitter of fairy lights through the shadows of the trees. When they reached the centre of the woods, Molly realised they’d been following genuine fairy lights: light balls balanced on the wands of flower fairies, who were gathered in the branches, drinking from acorn teacups.

  Molly saw Rosalind in a bright red dress, Beth’s aunts and uncles, and a few faces she recognised from Craigvenie, including her own Aunt Doreen, who looked a little wideeyed. She saw Caracorum posing by a pine tree as if she was guarding it. She saw the three fungus fairies sitting quietly under a wooden table eating blue cheese sandwiches. She saw the daffodil fairy perched on a healthy rowan branch, chatting to a fairy in a primrose-yellow dress.

  There were also guests Molly had never seen before, including six tumbling sphinx kittens, flying through the air on wings just big enough to carry their plump furry bodies, and a small blond boy playing conkers with Rosalind.

  The birthday girl looked over and waved. “Your big brother’s here, Kyle! Did you bring me a present, Innes? Did you all bring me a present?”

  “We all went on a quest,” said Molly, “we each fought our own monsters, and we found this for you.” She put the cold silver-white stone egg in Rosalind’s warm hands.

  Rosalind said, “Oh, it’s so glittery. Thank you!”

  As a ginger sphinx kitten narrowly missed Atacama’s ears and crash-landed in the icing of a carrot cake, Rosalind gave the egg a sticky cuddle.

  The stone egg cracked.

  Rosalind gasped and dropped it.

  The egg broke open, and a bird emerged from the silvery fragments.

  A shining bird, with bright rainbow-coloured feathers.

  The bird hopped up onto Rosalind’s hand, then flew into the air. It glided elegantly round the erratic sphinxes and landed on a branch, with its long rainbow-striped tail hanging down.

  Snib said, “Hello, little sister.”

  Rosalind said, “What a pretty present!”

  Molly leant against a birch tree, her friends around her, a slice of birthday cake in her hand and a bird singing above her. A bird who’d hatched without a curse…

  Molly wondered what it would be like to fly on wings of her own.

  She looked through the brightly lit branches to the cloudy sky beyond, and she smiled.

  Perhaps she’d find out tomorrow.

  If you’ve enjoyed the Spellchasers trilogy there are more magical adventures to be had in the Fabled Beasts Chronicles.

  Read on for an extract of the first book in the series – First Aid for Fairies and Other Fabled Beasts.

  Chapter 1

  Clip clop clip scrape.

  Clip clop clip scrape.

  The slow hoofbeats moved up the dark lane to the vet’s house and surgery.

  Clip clop clip scrape.

  Clip clop clip scrape.

  The boy’s breath made clouds in the air, and he gasped with pain every time the fourth hoof touched the ground.

  Clip clop clip scrape.

  Clip clop clip scrape.

  Helen closed her diary after another entry of school, violin practice, tea and homework. She wondered whether she should just write “same as yesterday,” as she had done nothing new for weeks. Like yesterday, she still hadn’t found the perfect tune, so she hadn’t been able to practise the most important piece of music. She sighed. There was only a week left to go until the concert.

  She put the diary up high where Nicola couldn’t reach to scribble on it, and went to the window to close the blind. She saw a shape moving up the lane. A horse? She opened her window a little.

  Clip clop clip scrape.

  Clip clop clip scrape.

  The horse looked odd. It was limping, the rider was leaning too far forward over the horse’s neck, and she couldn’t see the horse’s head. It must be hanging down very low. Yet the horse struggled up the lane.

  Clip clop clip scrape.

  Clip clop clip scrape.

  Mum wouldn’t be pleased if this was a late patient. She’d been out all evening with a flock of sheep that had run into a barbed wire fence after being panicked by a strange dog. Now she was soaking in a hot bubbly bath with a book and some biscuits. And Dad wouldn’t be pleased if the doorbell woke Nicola, he was trying to get some urgent work done on the computer.

  If it was just a local rider and a pony with a stone in its hoof, Helen could give them a hoof pick and a torch and they could sort themselves out.

  She crept downstairs and grabbed her fleece and her wellies, hoping to get out into the garden before the rider rang the doorbell and disturbed everyone else.

  Helen opened the front door as fast as she could, still waggling her feet into her boots. “Hold on a minute,” she whispered.

  Just before she pulled her fleece over her head, she saw a bare-chested boy on a chestnut horse, standing in the front garden.

  No. He wasn’t on the horse … he was the horse!

  The boy and the horse seemed to melt into each other.

  Helen stopped for a moment with the red fleece over her face. She shook her head, yanked the fleece down to her shoulders and looked again.

  The boy had a horse’s legs, back and tail.

  The horse had a boy’s head, arms and chest.

  The boy’s head said clearly, “Are you the horse healer? Can you heal me?” He pointed to the horse’s back leg, which was bleeding from a deep open gash.

  Helen looked behind her. No one in the house seemed to have heard.

  “Shhhh,” she said. She put her arms through the sleeves of her fleece, grabbed the bunch of keys from behind the door, and stepped out into the garden.

  Without saying another word, because she couldn’t think of any sensible ones, Helen led the lame horse-boy to the large animal surgery by the side of the house.

  She unlocked the sliding doors, put the lights on, and ushered him in. He squinted at the bright light shining off the white cupboards and the gleaming metal equipment, then he limped inside. His hooves were loud on the concrete floor.

  “Shhhh!”

  Helen looked at him, seeing him properly for the first time now they were out of the night. But even in the clear clean light, she couldn’t understand what she saw.

  She remembered what men’s torsos on horses’ bodies were called. Centaurs. But that was a mythological name for a fantastic animal. They weren’t real. She doubted they’d even existed in ancient Greece, let alone in the south of Scotland in the twenty-first century.

  “You’re a centaur.”

  “Yes. You’re a horse healer. Kindly heal my leg.”

  “I’m not a horse healer. My Mum is the vet.”

  “Then fetch her …”

  A gust of freezing winter wind blew in through the door, and Helen turned to close it. As the door started to slide shut, the creature crouching in the bush just three steps away grunted with frustration. Now he couldn’t see the centaur or the girl with the curly black hair. Should he wait here until the colt came out, or go back now and tell his Master that the young fool had involved a human child? Helen shoved the door until it clicked closed. She shouldn’t have taken a stranger into her Mum’s surgery, and she didn’t want anyone to see the light.

  She turned back to the centaur in the middle of the floor. “My Mum doesn’t believe in centaurs or cyclops or sirens or anything like that. She only believes in science books. If she doesn’t believe in you, she can’t really bandage you up.”

  “Do you believe in me?”

  Helen examined him from a distance. He scowled back at her.

  The glossy horsehair on his horse body seemed to grow from the same skin as his boy’s tummy and back. The tangled hair on his boy’s head was the same reddish colour as the horsehair. Most of the
hair on his head was hanging long onto his shoulders, but some was tied up off his face in a small ponytail above his forehead. She noticed scrapes and bruises on his bare skin. The horse and the boy had both been injured recently.

  “Do you believe in me?” he demanded again.

  He didn’t look like a circus trick. He wasn’t half a pantomime horse. But there was only one way to be sure.

  Helen was used to boys in the playground and horses in the fields and she wasn’t afraid of either. This horse-boy shouldn’t frighten her.

  So she took a step forward. She reached out her hand and ran it from his boy’s back to his horse’s flank. He hunched his shoulders, clearly annoyed at being touched, but he didn’t shy away. The boy’s skin was warm, and so was the horse’s hair. There were no joins.

  “Yes, I believe in you.”

  “Then you can bandage me.”

  “No, I can’t. I’m not a vet. You have to study for years at university to be a vet. I’m not even at the high school yet.”

  “Hasn’t your mother passed her skills and knowledge down to you? Don’t you watch and learn from your elders?”

  Helen knew how to wipe dog hairs off the table in the small animal surgery in the house, and how to clean horse droppings off this concrete floor. She knew how to take messages from farmers about lambing and how to spell the names of the most common worming pills. But she didn’t really want to know any more.

  All her friends thought it was so cool having a Mum who was a vet — cute kittens, pretty puppies — but Helen saw the bitten fingers and the stinking overalls, and heard the stories about putting old pets out of their misery. She didn’t want to be a vet. She wanted to be a musician. She wanted to work in a nice warm theatre or studio. Perhaps the occasional outdoor performance, in the summer. No mud or blood or dung.

  “No. I’m not learning her skills and knowledge. I’m learning my own. I’m not a healer. I’m a musician.”

  The boy closed his eyes and sighed.