Willow Witch

by Patty Jansen

  The single squirrel had split into two squirrels, running around and around with fire trailing from their bushy tails. The trees leaked water. Whenever it fell on a squirrel, there was a hiss and a cloud of steam.

  The squirrels ran faster and faster until they merged into a blur of fire. With each round, their numbers doubled. There were eight and then sixteen, and then she lost count. Their fiery bodies blurred into one another. The air chilled. It was as if the sun dimmed and the wind picked up, whipping up the flames erupting from the many squirrel tails. Loesie sat motionless in this spectacle.

  Johanna became aware of a strange noise, like a colony of bees trapped in a box. The extinguished torch had fallen on the ground next to the stone table. It trembled and jiggled. Little buds sprung from the handle of the torch. They grew into tendrils. Leaves sprouted. The twigs curled and twined around the base of the table. The vines pushed themselves up the side of the table and grew to the top of the heavy slab that covered it. They grew around Loesie’s legs, around the bottle that still stood there, up her arms and through her hair.

  The fire squirrels ran up the vines, seeding flames in their wake. The vines grew and grew as if trying to outpace the squirrels. Each time a vine burnt, a new one sprang up. They covered Loesie in layer upon layer of tightly-twisted vines. They grew up her legs, covered her body, her arms, grew through her hair, until her entire body was covered in vines. The squirrels ran up and down the vines, leaving fire in their wake. The vines regrew each time the fire had passed.

  The duke stood with his hands outstretched and his eyes closed. His face was red, glistening with sweat. He urged the squirrels on, faster and faster. They still multiplied, but not as fast as before.

  The vines combined into thicker branches that no longer had leaves. A solid cage of wood protected Loesie and the demon that possessed her.

  “Sylvan!” the duke yelled.

  A gust of wind fanned the flames, eating through the foliage. Sylvan stood with his hands outstretched. The wind obeyed him as it had when they were crossing the sand dunes.

  The flames spread until they covered the entire tangle of vines. The fire belched thick clouds of smoke. The duke stepped into them, yelling incantations at the top of his voice. The roaring of the fire almost drowned him out.

  He sang and chanted, waving his arms. The fire grew. Something soft hit Johanna’s shoulder, and then her head, and her arm. Dead and shrivelled leaves rained down from the tree roof. The heat seared her skin.

  “Loesie!” she called.

  Her friend was in the middle of that inferno, protected by a layer of vines that were slowly and certainly eaten by flames. Great gouts of sparks gushed from the fire.

  “The cage! Get the cage!” the duke shouted.

  As soon as Sylvan stopped fanning the wind and picked up the iron cage, the fire dimmed.

  His father took the cage from him, heavily leaning on his walking stick. “Go, keep the fire going.” He inched forward until the flames swallowed him.

  Johanna turned to Sylvan, but he took no notice of her. He waved his hands. He chanted at the top of his voice. The fire roared. Gouts of flame erupted from the burning vines. Even the stone slab burned.

  Then there was a rush of air towards the fire, followed by a sharper rush away from the fire. With an almighty roar, the knot of vines exploded. A huge fireball tore around the tree cathedral, dragging a white-hot object behind it. The fireball burst free through the cathedral roof and into the air. The glowing object bounced along the ground a few times and came to a halt. It was the metal cage, its door open, empty, glowing orange-hot and hissing steam.

  The vines around the stone table had exploded into thousands of shreds of wood. Loesie sat on the table, looking around with a deep frown on her face.

  The duke sank back against the cart, panting. “I let it escape.” He balled his fist at the overhanging trees where a burnt hole in the canopy indicated the place where the demon had burst to freedom. “I let it escape!”

  Johanna had no idea why he had thought that he could capture a magical being in a tiny iron cage, but she was glad that it had gone and that the duke could not harm anyone with it.

  “Johanna? What we be doing here?” That was Loesie’s voice. She rushed to her friend and closed her arms around her shoulders. Loesie felt cold and frail. The hand that reached up to Johanna’s arm trembled. Her fingers were so thin and bony, her lips cracked and bleeding.

  “Did the fire hurt you?”

  “I din’ see no fire. What sort of place is this? How’d we get here?”

  “It’s a long, long story. We better go back to the house. Are you hungry?”

  “I could eat a horse.”

  At that moment, Sylvan just came out of one of the tree tunnels leading the horse and wagon. “See, there be a horse. Someone’s listening to me.” She laughed.

  That was the old Loesie.

  “Is she all right?” Sylvan asked.

  The duke said, “She is very strong. I don’t know who did what to her, but it must have been a strong magician. I think we got most of the spell, but there may be a lingering effect. She’ll have to come back here if that is the case.”

  Loesie frowned at Johanna. “Why do these people talk funny? What’s this with spells and magicians? I thought ye city folk din’ believe in magic.”

  “We’re a long way from the city.” Johanna helped Loesie off the stone table. She might have been cured, but her muscles were very weak. She leaned on Johanna’s shoulder and was breathing heavily by the time they reached the cart.

  “I be no magician, Johanna. Tell them that. I want not a thing to do with magic anymore. It’s evil.”

  Johanna agreed with her, but the problem was that magic would happen no matter how people denied or forbade it. She climbed in the wagon and sat next to Loesie on the back seat. Sylvan helped the duke in before leading the horse through the tree tunnel back up the hill.

  Karl waited at the end of the tunnel with Sylvan’s horse. He climbed in the driver’s seat while Sylvan mounted his horse. He looked tired, too.

  He stared over the meadow and into the blue sky. “Did you see where this thing went, Karl?”

  “All I saw was a sudden ball of fire that leapt in the air. It went higher than I could see, and then it was gone. Nothing I could do.”

  The duke shook his head. “I didn’t expect you to do anything. It’s all right, even if it’s a pity that I couldn’t catch it.”

  The horses broke into a slow trot down the hill. Loesie leaned against Johanna. Her head rested on Johanna’s shoulder and grew heavy and warm.

  No one said anything on the way back, but the bird song seemed more cheerful and the sunlight brighter than before. When they arrived at the house, Karl helped get Loesie down from the wagon. She woke up enough to support her own weight, but that was about all. Considering how long it had been since Loesie had slept properly, she had a lot to catch up on.

  The duke said. “She will probably sleep most of the day. Longer, if she has been under this spell for a while.” He rubbed his face. “I’ll probably sleep for a while, too.”

  Sylvan helped Johanna take Loesie up the stairs to the front door. She could see Nellie’s face behind the upstairs window.

  They entered through the front door into the cavernous hall that had dispelled most of its eeriness and had become plain stuffy.

  “You’ll have to forgive my father,” Sylvan said when they were slowly walking up the stairs. “He hasn’t done any of this for a long time. We don’t see many people who are this badly affected by magic.”

  Did they see many people here at all? “I’ve . . . never seen anything like this. Is fire magic common?” She wanted to keep him talking. As yet, this place raised fa
r more questions than answers.

  “Not common at all.”

  “That is an extremely powerful type of magic.” Powerful enough to burn an entire city.

  “It’s not the most powerful. Destructive, yes, but not easily controlled and not hugely useful in everyday life. Do you know that you can always tell a fire magician by the creature his apparitions take on? It’s the only type of magician you can identify from their magic signature.”

  Was he trying to tell her in a roundabout way that the duke hadn’t been in Saardam? Was it even true what he told her? “Do you know anyone whose fire demons look like giant cats?”

  Sylvan turned to her. “Leopards? With spots?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t close enough to see spots. Do you know who that could have been?”

  “Cats are common as fire creature. I would really need to know if there were spots to tell who it was. Where did you see this?”

  “Fire demons caused the burning of Saardam.”

  He gave her a sharp look. “My father has nothing to do with that, before you ask.”

  “According to what you’ve just told me, I gathered as much.” If it’s the truth. “That’s why I’m asking about large cats. Can you give me some names of possible people?”

  “I am not allowed to, unless I have evidence to clearly identify the person.”

  “Allowed? Who doesn’t allow you to give names?”

  “The magician’s guild. They control the practices we adhere to. There is enough rumour and untruth circulated about magic without us adding to it.”

  “A magician’s guild?”

  “They’re normally fairly quiet and don’t draw attention to themselves. It is a place of knowledge and academia, where people learn about magic. I recommend that when your friend is ready to travel, you go on to Florisheim to seek out the guild. You will need any knowledge you can get.” His eyes met hers in a penetrating way that made her certain that he knew who she was, he knew who Roald was, and he had known this all along.

  And it would be really nice if she understood why the duke had sent men to get them off the Lady Sara before it reached Florisheim. Surely Giving weary travellers a bed was not the reason.

  ‎

  Chapter 14

  * * *

  THEY CARRIED Loesie into the bedroom. Nellie opened the door and folded back the covers. “Oh, that dress is disgusting. We should really do some washing, Mistress Johanna.”

  “Let me know what you want washed and I’ll ask Gertrude to take care of it,” Sylvan said.

  Gertrude, presumably, was the dour-faced servant.

  Johanna sank down on the edge of the bed when Sylvan had left. After all the excitement of the morning, she felt really tired, too.

  She straightened the blankets over her friend. Loesie was asleep, on her side, with her knees drawn up and her hand curled up into a relaxed fist and pressed against her cheek. She looked peaceful, like a child.

  Nellie watched from the other side of the room, as if still afraid to come close. “Is she going to be all right?”

  “Maybe.” Johanna wasn’t sure that Loesie was entirely cured yet, and wouldn’t believe it until she had spoken with Loesie and knew that she remembered everything that had happened to her on the farm. “It will be a few days until we know for sure, but it looks promising.”

  She remembered the vines growing over Loesie and the fireball bursting from them. All those things seemed to be such a long time ago already, as if they had happened in a different time and different place.

  “Where is Roald?”

  “Oh, my excuses, Mistress Johanna. I discovered that the duke has a really amazing library and I showed him. I’ve been unable to get him to come out, even to see you.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll go and see him later.”

  “He never even asked about you.”

  “That’s fine. It’s the way he is. No one can change that.”

  Johanna went to her own room and tried to sleep, but there was too much to mull over in her mind.

  The most important thing: the duke and his son had been unfailingly kind and helpful. And yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were somehow lying to her or trying to lead her—and Roald—into a trap. She worried that they were walking into this trap with their eyes open, or had already done so. But if they had, she couldn’t see it.

  After a while lying on the bed staring at the ceiling, she got up and went downstairs in search of the library.

  It was eerily quiet in the house. Her footsteps echoed in this horrible dark hall. Even the servants seemed to have disappeared. The paintings of the duke’s ancestors on the wall were so lifelike that in the dim light, Johanna sometimes thought that the people in the paintings moved. She stopped several times to read the notes engraved in small plaques in the frame, giving the painter’s name and the name of the person who had commissioned the work.

  The duke’s grandfather had been a tall man, like Sylvan, with penetrating blue eyes. Johanna could almost feel the magic radiating from the painting.

  She found the library at the end of the downstairs hallway where the dining room was. It was a high-ceilinged room with the walls covered in bookshelves. Because the ceiling was so high, a wooden gallery ran along the walls to have access to the top shelves. Father had a couple of shelves of books, beautifully written, with coloured plates and bound in gold-embossed leather. Some of them, such as Rinius’ On the Movement of Stars, had been Father’s presents to her. To have as many books as they had at home was considered a treasure. She could barely comprehend what this library must be worth.

  Roald stood in the very corner of the gallery, reading a thick book. He didn’t seem to have heard her, so Johanna padded up the wooden stairs, sliding her hand over the railing. The wood showed her the tranquillity of the room. The duke seated by the fire, reading. Sylvan copying diagrams. Gertrude dusting the shelves.

  “What are you reading?”

  Roald gasped and looked over his shoulder. He turned around. The book in his hands was a copy of The Anatomy of Man and he had it open on a page with the title The Woman With Child. It displayed a drawing of a woman’s body with a swollen stomach, cut open to show a child inside.

  Roald’s eyes met hers. Another man would have looked guilty, but he simply eyed her stomach, which was distinctly flat.

  “That’s what’s going to happen, right?”

  “Um, yes.”

  He continued to stare, first at the book and then at her, as if comparing the two. “It says here, ‘The woman should not exert herself, should not expose herself to the elements, or ride a horse.’ You should be careful.”

  “Later, yes.” When it became obvious that she was with child.

  Johanna stared at the page, but succeeded only in making herself feel sick at the sight of the woman’s cut-open stomach.

  Being married meant bearing children. It wasn’t just about having no fun. It was about the ordeal and the pain and the fact that many women didn’t survive. Her own mother had died while with child, although not in childbed. How could she tell if she was with child? Not for a while yet, that was for sure. Way back in Saardam, so long ago that it seemed another century, Augustina talked about quickening. Johanna had been disgraceful enough not to show any interest. She didn’t want babies, right?

  She was saved from an uncomfortable discussion when the door to the library opened and two people came in. One she recognised immediately as Sylvan.

  The other was Kylian.

  He looked up at the gallery, turned to Sylvan and nodded.

  There was no longer any question about their identity.

  “I’d like you to meet my cousin. He is a physician and he insisted on
seeing the young lady afflicted by magic.”

  “She is asleep.”

  “So I heard from the other young lady.” His eyes met Johanna’s with renewed curiosity.

  Johanna made sure that she went down the stairs first, to protect Roald. Now that her and Roald’s identities were in the open, she felt strangely relieved. That was one thing she no longer needed to worry about.

  She met Kylian’s brown eyes.

  He gave a small bow. “Fancy meeting you again here.”

  Funny, that, seeing as the last time she had seen him, he’d vaulted the fence at the palace, just before it burned.

  “One could say the same about you.” Haughty, detached. Yes, maybe she could do this royal thing.

  “The duke is my uncle. I regularly use his estate as a way house.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Do you know of the dead bodies? “You spoke to my maid this morning. Why didn’t you come into the house for breakfast? You could have met us all there.”

  “I had my own matters to attend to. I presume you saw the farm on the way to the crossing point? I run those farms for my uncle. I arrived very late last night. My uncle told me of the possessed girl he had as guest. He said he was going to attempt an exorcism and asked me if I would like to have a look at her when it was done.” Then he saw Roald. “Oh.” He laughed and bowed. “Your Highness.” He bowed to Johanna, too. “To you, too. I heard about your interesting marriage.”

  So much for Nellie not telling him anything.

  “When your friend recovers, you must come with me to Florisheim where we can have a proper ceremony. My father will be most happy to host it, as he is already hosting many of your citizens. Several had told me that they had seen the heir to the throne escape the palace—one man even helped him—but he had not turned up at Florisheim with the others. So when I heard the rumours of a halfwit man with three women travelling upriver, I guessed it was you.”

  Sylvan gave him a cold look.

  “Let us go and see this friend of yours.”