The Witching Elm (A Memento Mori Witch Novel, Book 1)

by C. N. Crawford

  Thomas reeled back. “What?”

  “Maremount, the Angelic language, the history of anti-witchcraft organizations—it’s quite the search history you’ve got. Most people don’t believe in these things.”

  The man stood and reached into his pocket, pulling out a card. “I have a feeling you might know some people we’d be interested in speaking to. When you feel like talking, give us a call.” He laid the card in front of Thomas before striding out of the room.

  Thomas picked it up. There was a phone number, and an arc of words read lux in tenebris lucet: light shines through the darkness. Below the words was an emblem. It was a chalice, in fact—exactly the shape of the one he’d just seen in the illustrations.

  31

  Fiona

  On a Sunday night, the full coven joined to celebrate Fiona’s birthday in the Adepti room. Though Fiona’s mother was still in New York, she’d sent Mariana money to buy Fiona a chocolate mousse cake. That morning, outside Fiona’s room, two new books about Lord Byron arrived—along with a note asking her to remedy her D average in Algebra.

  Soon, Fiona’s great-aunt would be taken off life support. This evening’s candlelit celebration was a welcome distraction from thoughts of dying relatives and tumbling heads, and watching Tobias try to muddle his way through “Happy Birthday” brought a smile to Fiona’s face. She took a bite of the dark chocolate cake, savoring the rich flavor, while Alan described the banshee’s horrible scream to Celia and Mariana.

  When they finished scraping up the last crumbs, Tobias held up the philosopher’s guide. “It’s your birthday, Fiona. I don’t suppose you want to spend it practicing Angelic?”

  She sighed. “We probably should.”

  As they sat on the floor, he repeated Angelic phrases from the book. By nine o’clock, Alan had begun to fiddle with his pencil, and Celia yawned, tracing her finger along the beast designs on the rug. Mariana checked her phone every thirty seconds for news stories about the terrorists. Only Fiona maintained eye contact.

  “When do we get to transform?” Alan interrupted Frater Basilus’s Spell for Wind. “I think I’ve got the wind spell down.”

  Tobias closed the book and rose. “All right. Here’s how it works. Everyone has a familiar spirit. A familiar is an animal who aids you in your alchemical quest. With the right spell, you can take its shape. It begins when you’re initiated into a coven.” He paced in front of the fireplace. “While in a trance, you’ll transform into your familiar. After that, you’ll be able to transform with the right spell. In a few weeks or months, your familiar animal will come to you, and you’ll name it. Mine’s a crow called Ottomie.”

  “I hope I get a snake.” Mariana smiled.

  “But you need to be prepared.” Tobias raised his index finger. “It takes a toll, physically and mentally. Your mind won’t work in quite the same way when you’re an animal. If you don’t get control, you’re at risk of losing yourself to the bestial side. It’s harder when you first start. You have to remember that you’re still you, even if you’re in an animal’s body.”

  “Got it,” said Celia, twirling her fair hair around her finger. “Can we start now?”

  He instructed everyone to sit in a circle and placed a small white candle in front of each person. In the center, he burned musky incense in a brazier. He asked everyone to repeat after him and began chanting in Angelic.

  As she repeated the words, Fiona grew lightheaded. She closed her eyes and felt herself rise out of her body. She wasn’t quite sure where her limbs were until she felt wet gravel beneath her hands and knees. She was kneeling in the dark. By the sound of trickling water, she thought she might be in a streambed. A dripping noise echoed through the space. Reaching out, she touched slippery granite to her right, covered in a thin sludge. She stood, bumping her head on a low ceiling.

  “Please. Don’t let my familiar be some sort of troglodyte or inbred cave person.” Her voice echoed off the walls.

  After she rose, her skin started to feel tighter on her body, and then it hardened. With a nauseating lurch of her stomach, she bent over as her muscles contracted. A sharp pain ripped through her elongating fingers, and they ruptured into leathery wings. Disoriented, she lost her balance as her legs shortened, but within moments, her wings beat the dank air. The pain and nausea subsided, and a squeak rose from her throat.

  She gasped as she discovered that not only could she see in the dark, she could also see sound. The squeak molded the cave like mercury, giving shape to its bumps and crevices. Stalactites dripped water onto the cave floor, and rivulets of liquid damped the walls.

  She emitted another squeak. The noise echoed off something fluttering toward her through the caves. Another bat? As it flew closer, she discovered that it was a creature with delicate, papery wings, like an old man’s skin. It circled her, and every contour of its body pressed into her mind. It was a moth, but not an ordinary one. It was larger than it should be, and from its back, an image of a human skull stared out. Entranced, she followed the moth as it flew through the cave’s tunnels, as if she were drawn by the creature’s gravitational pull.

  A scream ripped her out of her trance. Her body began its rapid expansion, her skeleton swelling within her flesh. Her eyes snapped open, and there she was, back in the Adepti room. She dry-heaved on her hands and knees. Her muscles burned, and her blood felt acidic in her veins.

  She glanced toward the fireplace to find Celia lying on the floor, moaning. Nearby, Alan slumped against the wall, gaping at a gash on his arm. Tobias had taken off his shirt in an attempt to staunch the bleeding. Her face pale, Mariana rested against the tapestry with her hand over her mouth, black bangs hanging in front of her face.

  “What happened?” Fiona panted, eyeing Alan’s bloodied arm. Her head throbbed, and every muscle resisted as she tried to move back into a sitting position.

  “Celia attacked Alan,” said Mariana.

  “Why?” Fiona gave up, lying flat on the ground.

  “I said I was sorry,” mumbled Celia from the floor.

  Tobias finished binding Alan’s arm, tying his shirt in a knot. “Celia transformed into a mountain lion. Alan was a wolverine. Celia got a little lost in the beast.” He frowned at Celia. “I did warn you.”

  “I hope it doesn’t hurt too much, Alan,” said Fiona, forcing herself upright. “I was a bat. What were you, Mariana?”

  “Snapping turtle,” she said, closing her eyes and swallowing. “Ugh, I feel rough.”

  “I almost lost my damn arm.” Alan glared at Celia.

  “You probably antagonized me.” Celia sat up. Her face had a greenish tinge, and she rested her head in her hand. “I’ll get you some bandages or whatever in a minute.”

  Tobias looked around the room. “Is everyone okay? I mean, besides Alan?”

  “I’m fine.” Mariana clutched her stomach. “So at some point, I’m going to meet my snapping turtle friend? What is it—like a Native spirit animal thing?”

  Tobias shrugged. “It’s just a philosopher thing.”

  “But is any of it Native magic? Like the original Mather Adepti—they were English and Algonquian,” said Alan listlessly, staring at his wounded arm.

  Fiona sat up and stretched. She tried not to stare at Tobias’s shirtless chest. “What do you mean they were Algonquian? Here? At Mather?”

  “We learned that from the shew stone,” said Tobias.

  Mariana listlessly fiddled with the pentagram around her neck. “But you don’t see them recognized anywhere. They’re not in any paintings. Just white people.” She opened her brown eyes long enough to roll them. “As usual.”

  “They aren’t listed in the colonial wars on the war memorial.” Fiona’s muscles slowly relaxed. She avoided looking at Tobias.

  The room was quiet as the coven members rubbed their sore muscles and skin. Celia’s face gradually returned to its normal hue, and she worked to smooth out her hair.

  Mariana rose to stretch. “What did the banshee say,
about not finding what you’re looking for?”

  “You’re searching for what is not there,” Fiona recited.

  Mariana paused mid-stretch, staring down at her friend. “Maybe she didn’t mean the poem isn’t there. Maybe it meant that you should be searching for things that are missing. Like the names of the Algonquian students on the memorial.”

  “In order to get into the library, we pulled the blank book.” Tobias rubbed his chin, pacing. “And we went through the memorial that left off the Algonquian names.”

  Alan grasped at the white shirt wrapped around his arm as a deep red stain spread within the fabric. “The card in the catalogue that led us here was blank. No titles.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” said Fiona.

  “We need to look around the rest of the building.” Alan shut his eyes again. “But Celia needs to get me some ointment first. Or sew up my arm.”

  “We could look around in a couple of hours, after we rest up and everyone else is asleep. Fiona faltered as she rose, resting her hand on the wall. “We can use Lady Cleo’s Cloak.”

  Celia rubbed her shoulder. “We should revisit the Round Chamber.”

  As Fiona rested against the wall, she thought of the hours she’d spent in the Round Chamber, tuning out the droning voices of her teachers while she stared at the names engraved in the wooden walls. “Celia’s right. There are names there. All English names, like the memorial plaque.”

  Mariana checked her watch. “Should we meet up again at midnight?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Fiona.

  Celia stood, offering her hand to Alan. She pulled him up, and he rested on her shoulder, hobbling toward the door. Mariana shuffled after them, while Tobias lingered behind.

  “I don’t want to walk around without a shirt,” he said. “Mind if I wait here?”

  Fiona glanced at his strong shoulders. Feeling a blush rise in her cheeks, she forced herself to look up at his face. “That’s fine. I mean—what?”

  He sat down against the wall and looked up at her. “Are you feeling okay? You seem distracted.”

  She sat across the room from him and stared at the tapestry. “Guess I’m lightheaded. From the transformation, obviously.” She emitted a short, awkward laugh and tried to change the subject. “So this would just be like an ordinary day to someone from Maremount—transforming into an animal.”

  “There are a lot of things there that you’d find strange, but beautiful things too.”

  “Like what?”

  “I can think of a few things that I’d show you. If Rawhed were gone.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “There’s the pond where you could see the gemstones from the water spirits’ garden. In the North End—what you call Copp’s Hill—there’s a night garden for observing the moon. It’s right near Fishgate.”

  “That sounds lovely.” She sighed. “Here it’s just a cemetery.”

  “There’s a burial ground there too, and a soul-mill where you can hear the voices of the tormented spirits who power the machine.”

  She shuddered, and an image flashed in her mind of the death’s-head moth. “Speaking of death, what’s the deal with the other creature I saw? There was a moth with me. With a skull on its back.”

  He stared at her. “What do you mean, a moth?”

  “It was flying around me, and I followed it.”

  His frown deepened. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Why? What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know. It must be another philosopher, but it’s no one from our coven. It makes me think…” He touched the smooth skin under his jawline. “It makes me think someone might be watching us.”

  32

  Tobias

  At midnight, they regrouped in the Adepti room. Tobias had borrowed one of Fiona’s sweaters. His broad shoulders stretched the green wool.

  With the full coven gathered, he handed Fiona the tattered spell book. “Do you want to lead us in Lady Cleo’s Cloak?”

  With everyone standing in a circle, Fiona intoned the spell, and the others repeated after her for additional power. When they finished the recitation, Tobias watched as everyone glimmered out of view.

  So this was what it felt like. He’d never had the chance to try a cloaking spell, though he’d seen them before. Father used to use them to smuggle books from the bookstores forbidden to Tatters.

  They tiptoed down the stairwell into the darkened library. He smiled faintly. Could he be on the verge of discovering the key to Rawhed’s destruction? He could be home soon, eating his father’s bread pudding by the fireplace—a hero to the Tatters. Not that he was in it for the glory, of course.

  They crept through the abandoned hallways toward the Round Chamber. The auditorium door creaked as someone pushed it forward and flicked on a light switch, and they slipped into the hall. Tobias felt an elbow brush against him as he walked around the curving wall to the right, examining the names engraved in the red oak.

  “Gardiner, Cary, Webster, Woodward…” he read. On the right side of the room, a large portrait of the colonial Governor John Winthrop interrupted the names. “These are the same names as those on the plaque.”

  “This one looks different, though,” Mariana’s voice echoed from the other side of the Round Chamber. “Philalethes.”

  Tobias turned to see the carving on the opposite side of the room.

  “Philalethes,” Fiona repeated. She was right by his shoulder. “I think that’s ancient Greek for lover of… something. Lethes, whatever that is. It seems like a pseudonym.”

  “So maybe his real name is missing. Maybe that’s the missing thing we’re looking for,” said Celia from near the entrance.

  “There’s a smaller carving in the first letter of his name,” said Mariana. “It’s deep. Hang on—I think it’s an upside-down triangle with a line through it.”

  “That’s the alchemical symbol for earth.” Tobias’s heart beat faster. “Philalethes might have been one of the Mather Adepti who hid the poem.”

  “So what do we do now?” asked Fiona.

  “The earth symbol usually goes along with three other symbols, all placed across from each other like points of a compass.” Tobias spoke quickly in his excitement. “So air would be somewhere near me, water would be in the back of the hall, and fire would be near the back of the stage.”

  Celia and Alan hunted for the symbol for water, which they located near the entrance doors. Mariana searched the brick fireplace on the stage, while Fiona and Tobias inspected the wall next to them. They found the air sign on a brass plaque below John Winthrop’s long, folded fingers.

  Tobias smiled, absentmindedly rubbing at the soft sweater that stretched over his arms. “We’ve got air. That just leaves fire. You find anything yet, Mariana?”

  “Not yet. I mean, it’s a fireplace, but I don’t see the symbol. Either it’s not here, and that’s a clue, or I’m just failing at finding it.”

  “If it’s the same height as our symbols, it should be near the mantel,” said Alan.

  “Guys?” Celia said. “I can push on the symbol, like a button. It goes into the wood when you press it.”

  Tobias jabbed his index finger into the air symbol, and it sunk into the brass. “Ours does, too.”

  “Maybe we’re supposed to push them all at the same time,” said Alan. “I’m heading over to the earth symbol.”

  When Alan was in place, they counted to three. As they pressed the signs, a brick edged out from the fireplace. Mariana’s invisible hand pulled it out, and from behind it, a piece of paper wrapped around a thin, cylindrical object.

  “I’ve got it, guys,” Mariana called out, unfurling the paper. “It’s the poem. And a wand or something.” A piece of paper and a thin wooden stick floated in the air.

  The others rushed over to join her. This was it—they had the key to stopping Rawhed. The hangings, the torture, the imprisoning of Tatters—it could all end now. Tobias was going to fulfill the Ragmen’s mission. />
  “It’s got a picture of a snake,” said Mariana breathlessly. “Someone take a photo.”

  Tobias crossed the stage, bumping into someone’s shoulder. They crowded around the poem. At the top, a drawing of a snake twisted into an infinity symbol. Its tail rested in its mouth—the ouroboros. Around the drawing’s border, someone had written, “the beginning and the end.” Mariana turned the drawing back to herself, and read:

  We wait beneath corrupted frozen ground.

  Unconsecrated, tangled roots enshroud

  our crumpled necks and long-smothered embers,

  where the hours fly, and death is remembered.

  In nameless hollows, Philip’s men await—

  the unlamented…

  The hovering poem lowered for a moment. “This is the new part,” said Mariana.

  The unlamented clawing back their fates

  from those who fanned the flames with pious breath—

  those sanguine, celebrated gentlemen.

  The King, his voice extinguished after death,

  awaits in buried ash to speak again,

  made whole above the one who made him mute—

  The burned, the chopped, the choked rise from the roots.

  Mariana took a deep breath. “So… what do we do?”

  Tobias pulled the poem toward him, running his fingertips along his jaw. These didn’t seem like instructions. “I recognize the snake,” he said. “It represents the power created by the union of opposites, the beginning and the end of the universe, just like it says. It’s the cyclical nature of the world—the past will be repeated. But I don’t know what the poem means.”

  The wand hovered higher. “What about this?” said Mariana.

  Tobias grabbed the rough hickory wand. He tried to remember what he’d learned of wands, but they rarely did anything interesting. “I think they can be used on enchanted items. You can trace it around an object to enchant it, or to un-enchant it.”