Bewitched

by Sandra Schwab

  Smoothly Amy drew the knife from the sheath. Now it began.

  She had thought this ritual through a hundred times. She had pondered on each step she would need to take, on each word that would need to be spoken, and on each drop of blood she would shed into the snow. For the sake of the Stapletons she could not afford to fail.

  She closed her eyes and reached out her mind for the stones once more. Standing still and silent in a circle of power, a circle to bind the power, a circle to awaken the power, power of darkness and light—

  The blade of the knife bit into her palm.

  Amy hissed with the pain.

  She opened her eyes.

  Blood ran down her fingers and dropped darkly onto the snow.

  The shivers increased.

  Grinding her teeth together, Amy started to cut a seven-pointed star into the snow. Each stone was a point, at each stone a drop of blood.

  When she was finished she returned to the center of the star and the circle, dipped her finger into her own blood and drew a crescent moon on the center of her chest. This done, she slowly lay back into the snow and flung her arms wide, a willing sacrifice to spark the hunger of the land.

  Immediately the coldness embraced her, numbed her body, and she gasped.

  The icy cold was more than she thought she could bear. Yet in order to be reborn as one with the land, she needed to die first, if only in ritual. Renewed dread clogged her throat. She wanted to flee, rush back to the warm house, to the lover waiting in her bed. But she was the only one who could keep the people of Rawdon Park safe. She had to go through with the ritual.

  For long moments, Amy stared up at the moon, before she closed her eyes.

  Circle of power…

  I am here…

  A thousand needles piercing her skin, the pain so intense that tears trickled from below her closed lids. Defenseless, she lay in the snow. While the stones looked on, the breath froze in her lungs, the cold ate up her insides.

  She bit her lip until she tasted blood.

  I am here. Hear me, Old Mother Moon, you Elders of Stone, I am here. Please accept my sacrifice.

  Amy sobbed.

  She arched her throat. “I am here.” A small moan only, but in the earth deep below her she could feel a stirring.

  Another sob. She whimpered with pain and fear.

  “I AM HERE!” she cried.

  And then something roared toward her and through her and exploded in the stones all around. Her high, wailing scream was cut abruptly short.

  ~*~

  When Amy came to her senses, she was lying in a tight ball in the middle of the stone circle, still naked, but now filled with a curious warmth.

  She blinked. The snow around her had in part melted away, and the star she had drawn had vanished.

  Slowly she sat up, her limbs heavy and weak like those of a newborn lamb. In a daze, she stared at her hand, where the cut of the knife had closed and was no more than an angry red scratch. Then, finally, it dawned on her: She had survived the ritual. With tears in her eyes, she looked up to the moon.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  The moon, which ruled the bodies of all women and appeared as the symbol of goddesses all around the world, smiled a little and sailed on toward the horizon.

  Giving herself a mental shake, Amy stumbled to her feet. She gazed at the stones around her, and as she now opened her mind, she could feel a deep humming inside them. She smiled.

  Oh yes, she had been successful. All would be well: no more harm would come to Rawdon Park. She laughed with the joy of it all.

  Before she left the circle, she once more touched the two stones where she had entered it. “Thank you.” And then she stepped outside and hastily donned her clothes.

  All the way back to the house, a soft glow warmed her body from the inside out and robbed the cold of its bite. Still, when she finally slipped back into her room, she felt bone weary. She fumbled with her clothes and hid them in her chest of drawers before she crawled back into bed.

  Fox stirred. Sleepily, he looked over his shoulder. “Where have you been?” he mumbled.

  “Shh.” She burrowed against his body, and willingly he turned to enfold her in his arms.

  He pressed a kiss onto her forehead. “You haven’t been rambling around the house, have you?” He gave a contented sigh as he nestled his face into the curve of her shoulder.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she whispered.

  He raised his head. “So you have been rambling around the house?” he said, fully awake now. He snorted. “You must be daft, sweetheart. You could’ve caught your death in these cold hallways.” He bussed her cheek. “Don’t do it again.”

  “No,” she breathed. “I won’t.” She slung her arm around his waist and hugged him tightly against her body. “I won’t.”

  ~*~

  Over the next few days Amy set about perfecting her spell by pricking her finger repeatedly and drawing small signs against evil in strategic places throughout the house. She drew the same signs on the forehead of the children, who now, after she had displayed her skill at skipping stones, not to speak of her having saved Pip, firmly believed there was nothing she could not do. For the lake she made a small sachet filled with salt and cleansing herbs, and let a few drops of blood fall onto the mixture before she broke a hole in the ice and threw the sachet into the water. She watched dark bubbles rise to the surface, and hoped the spell would work.

  In the depth of the night, when Fox lay lost in dreams beside her, she drew the sign against evil on his forehead, too. She kissed his cheek, then put her chin onto his shoulder. Despite the fact that he was fast asleep, he immediately adjusted his position to fit her against his body. With a sigh, Amy laid her head on his chest and drank in his scent and warmth.

  Thus she had done all she could to ensure the safety of the Stapletons, but still, the niggling worry deep inside her would not vanish. Not only was she painfully conscious that she was living on borrowed time, but as the days passed, she also found it increasingly difficult not to confide in Fox. She hated lying to him, yet what would happen if she did tell him? For even knowing what she did, she could not bear the thought of losing him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ten days after Amy had been to the circle, a special punch ceremony was held at Rawdon Park as a foretaste of the Christmas festivities that were soon to follow. In the late afternoon, when darkness had fallen around the house, the whole family assembled at a table in the drawing room. Admiral Pickering, it appeared, would act as the Master of Ceremonies. The children skipped from one foot to the other with excitement. “Feuerzangenbowle, Feuerzangenbowle,” Dick and Pip chanted, while Annie chirped in between, “Fir-ang-bowl, fir-ang-bowl.”

  “The admiral has spent many a Christmas at Rawdon Park,” the dowager countess explained to Amy. “And each year he delights us with a Feuerzangenbowle. He picked up the recipe when staying with an acquaintance in Frankfurt years ago, did you not, Admiral?”

  “Indeed, I did.” He gave Amy a smile. “It is a special punch that is served in the winter months. Very popular with the students, too, or so I have heard.”

  The door opened and Ramtop, the butler, appeared, carrying an enormous pot filled with fragrant, steaming red wine. Two footmen followed him with trays, one of which held glasses, the other a ladle, a bottle, a white cone, and what looked like a pair of tongs. The pot was put on a wooden plate in front of the admiral, and the trays set down on the table. Afterwards the footmen bowed and left the room, while the butler brought a candle and a fidibus.

  “So,” the admiral said.

  Dick gripped the edge of the table and leaned forward. “Do we start? Do we start now?”

  Annie sidled up to Amy and gripped her hand. “Fir-ang-bowl.” She beamed up at her.

  “For those among you who have never seen a Feuerzangenbowle”—Admiral Pickering made a bow in Amy’s direction—“what we need for it is this: dry r
ed wine boiled with orange slices, sticks of cinnamon, and cloves. A pair of tongs”—he picked up the item from the tray—“long enough to be laid across the top of the pot, and a sugarloaf.” He took the white cone and wedged it into the tongs before he put them onto the pot. “And then, the most important ingredient: rum.” He held up the bottle to the children’s excited ahhs and ohhs.

  Annie clapped. “And now? And now? And now?”

  The admiral threw the little girl a smile, which made her giggle. “We dim the lights.” He nodded at Ramtop, who proceeded to walk around the room and extinguish all candles except for the one still burning on the table.

  “And now?” Annie reached for Amy’s hand again, tugged at her fingers. “And now?”

  “We dash some rum over the sugar, like this…”

  “And now?”

  “We light the sugar!” the two boys crowed in unison.

  “Exactly.” Admiral Pickering chuckled a little as he reached for the rolled paper and lit it on the candle.

  “Ooooooh!” Annie breathed and snuggled closer to Amy’s side. Wide-eyed, the girl watched as the admiral set the sugar on fire.

  Sizzling, the orange flame sprang from the fidibus to the rum-soaked sugar and turned a light blue. Wherever it touched the surface of the white cone, the sugar became brown until thick drops trickled through the brackets of the tongs.

  “Lovely,” the dowager countess said.

  “The alcohol will burn away and the liquid sugar will drop into the wine,” the admiral explained while he was critically watching the flame.

  “A bit more rum, eh, Admiral?” Lord Rawdon suggested as the flame started to burn lower and lower.

  As if on cue, his sons jumped up and down. “Yes! More rum!”

  “Yes, definitely more rum.” Smiling, the admiral poured a liberal dose over the sugarloaf. Immediately the blue flame shot up high. Just in time he jerked his head back. Dick and Pip chortled with delight.

  “You nearly set your eyebrows on fire, Admiral Pickering!” Dick cried, and his brother giggled.

  His giggles intensified as the admiral waggled his brows at him.

  “You have to be fast for this.” Admiral Pickering proceeded to show them, and poured more rum over the sugar.

  This time the fire snaked into the neck of the bottle and struck a small flame there. Annie squealed. Yet, unperturbed, the admiral blew out the fire in the bottle.

  From the corner of her eye, Amy saw Fox stepping behind her. “Well, Miss Bourne,” he murmured. His hand briefly touched her arm. “Are you enjoying yourself?”

  She smiled up at him.

  He searched her face, then lifted his hand to draw a tendril of her hair back behind her ear. “Oh yes, you are.” His eyes, which were black in the dim light, crinkled.

  As it so often did, his tenderness and affection gave her a pang. Her cheerfulness dimmed. Quickly she averted her face so he would not worry about her. She slipped her free hand through his arm and, thus cuddled up to him, watched the rest of the sugar melt.

  How could she go on lying to him and keeping him in ignorance of what had happened to them? It seemed selfish despite the possibility that the truth might drive him away. For how could she expect him to accept the existence of magic when the real Fox so adamantly believed in rational thought?

  Amy sighed. In the past ten days there had been no further incidents, no further sign that evil was still at work in Rawdon Park. Everybody had been astonished when the ice on the lake suddenly thawed and the gardeners found a most ugly creature on the banks—half fish, half worm, rather dead and giving off a most dreadful odor. With satisfaction Amy had heard that it had been burned straightaway. She was now fairly confident that the threat to the Stapletons had been removed—but still, she could not in good conscience keep quiet any longer. She had reached a decision: she needed to talk to her aunt and uncle, and she would put a plan into motion today.

  She swallowed, then glanced up at Fox. Nervousness made her stomach cramp. How would he react when he learned the truth? What would happen when the spell of the potion was broken?

  She bit her lip and worried.

  When the last of the sugar had melted and dripped into the wine, Ramtop lit the candles again while Admiral Pickering put a spoon into each tumbler and proceeded to hand out the hot punch. A footman brought hot chocolate for the children.

  The admiral filled the last tumbler for himself. “So—” He looked up and smiled. “Before we drink, let me say a few words. Once again, it has been a delight staying with you, my friends. This year it has been a particular joy to get to know Miss Bourne, who will soon be part of the Stapleton family.” Everybody smiled, but Amy’s heart sank. “And—who knows? Next year there might be yet another addition to the family circle come Christmas.” He gave Amy and Fox a broad wink, to the general amusement of the Stapletons, who all broke into hearty chuckles.

  Fox laughed. “Aww, Admiral…”

  The earl raised his glass to his brother. “We would certainly be delighted about any new addition to the family.”

  Annie looked up from her chocolate. “Which?”

  “Shh.” The dowager countess put her hand on her granddaughter’s shoulder. “This is going to be a surprise.” She smiled.

  Amy grabbed Fox’s arm. Don’t let me be sick. Please, don’t let me be sick. Her fingers dug into his muscles.

  Surprised, he looked down. “Amy?” Worry laced his voice.

  Luckily, the admiral chose that moment to continue. “And thus I would like to thank you for your hospitality, and here is to all the wonderful changes that will await this family in the coming year. Cheers.”

  “Cheers!” The drawing rang with joyful voices; only Amy felt as if her insides had turned to stone.

  Hastily she took a sip of the fruity, spicy punch and closed her eyes as it exploded into warmth in her stomach. Would this torment never end?

  Eventually, everyone strolled across the room to take seats on the sofas. Amy chose a spot next to Fox and circled the mouth of her glass with her fingers, trying to gather her composure. The voices around her merged into a buzzing noise, which reverberated in her head.

  She took a few deep breaths.

  Entwining his fingers with hers, Fox leaned toward her. “Are you feeling all right?” he whispered.

  Desperately, she tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “Oh… yes.”

  He lowered his head to peer into her face. “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.” Amy finally managed a tight smile. She allowed herself a last look at this face, at the earnest blue-gray eyes framed by pale lashes, at the sweet sprinkle of freckles across his nose. Then she squeezed his fingers, and, “I have thought…” She turned toward the earl. “I need your advice in a certain matter, my lord.”

  Fox’s brother raised his brows in silent inquiry.

  “You see… when our engagement was announced, I asked Mr. Bentham, who acted as my temporary guardian, as you know, to send a letter to my uncle in Warwickshire.”

  “Yes?” The earl took a swallow of his punch.

  Fox’s thumb rubbed over the back of her hand. He would never know how much it cost her to force out the next few words. “But because it all happened so fast…” Again, everybody chuckled, making it doubly difficult for her to continue. But ruthlessly overriding her own pain, she went on, “I worry that he might have forgotten. So I was wondering whether you would be so kind… Or perhaps Mr. Stapleton should…”

  “What an excellent idea!” Lady Rawdon’s eyes sparkled. “We will let Richard write a letter; the official Rawdon seal looks wonderfully splendid I’ve always thought.”

  “Ha!” Fox growled. “He will tell the Bournes the most dastardly things about me—”

  His sister-in-law clucked her tongue. “Fiddle-faddle. He will write only the nicest possible things. Won’t you, Richard?” She threw her husband a sharp look. “Richard?”

  “Oh yes,” Lord Rawdon hurried to say. “You will only
need to give me the address, Miss Bourne.”

  “It’s…” Amy faltered. One last chance to change her mind. But, no. “It’s Three Elms, near Warwick,” she said, her voice surprisingly firm.

  “Wonderful.” The countess beamed at her. “You will write the letter first thing tomorrow morning, won’t you, Richard?”

  And so they had passed the point of no return.

  Numbly Amy sat, while Lady Rawdon detailed exactly what her husband ought to put in the letter, before the conversation eventually moved to another topic. Admiral Pickering entertained the round with the adventures of his travels in Scotland, how one bellwether or other had taken a fancy to his canary yellow curricle and led the whole sheep herd after said curricle. And the faster the admiral had driven, the faster the sheep had trotted until they had dashed after the carriage at full gallop.

  Amy blinked.

  The story was certainly bizarre enough to fit her state of mind. Indeed, she mused inconsequentially, she probably wouldn’t have been surprised if the admiral’s sheep had suddenly sprouted wings. Or perhaps his horse could have been the one to sprout wings. Like Pegasus.

  She frowned.

  There was a commotion in the hallway. The next moment the door was flung open, and the butler stumbled into the room, his face paper white. “M-My lord…”

  He was thrust aside by a young, blond man, exquisitely groomed. Just inside the room, the stranger stopped. “Ahh,” he said, and a smile that sent shivers down Amy’s spine curled his lips. Heavens, she knew this man! She had seen his face before, she was sure of it!

  The men rose. “What—” Lord Rawdon began, but uniformed men were already swarming past the blond stranger, and the light of the candles flickered over the blades of their swords.

  As if from a distance, Amy heard the gasps of the people around her, while her heart was hammering against her ribs. This shouldn’t be happening! she screamed inside. I secured the house with protection spells! I used my blood!

  But within moments they were surrounded by blinking steel and herded together at one end of the drawing room. Annie started to cry.