The Witch of Glenaster

by Jonathan Mills

  I watched him for a long moment, as he gazed steadily into the fire, and then some instinct made me turn; and I saw my father standing there, by the door to my brother’s bedroom, and I realized he must have been there for a good while, and had heard much of what had been said. And when I looked at him I saw that his eyes were wet with tears; and he said nothing to me, but only nodded, slowly and sadly, like a little boy. And I went up to him, and kissed his face, and wiped his tears, and told him not to be afraid for me; that my brother and I would be all right, that we had each other, and that no one would destroy us. I said all these things, and I think they reassured him a little; but secretly I resolved to destroy the Witch, when I was old enough to travel the many leagues to her home in Glenaster, in the far north, and strong enough to put my sword through her black heart.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was a bright morning in April, and I was up on the hill collecting wood for the fire, when I saw them.

  The high moorland which rises above the village was smart against the sky, a reddish brown below the open blue, and at first I thought the heather was waving violently in the breeze. But then I realized it seemed to be moving, pouring over the hill in a wave, and I saw that it was not heather, but people; and a great mass of people, it seemed, though a child’s eyes often exaggerate. And they were running down, down into the valley like frightened ponies, and when I heard their screams I ran to fetch my father.

  Within minutes, the village had been roused, and the bell was tolling from the lookout post, and the Head Man and the militia stood facing the hills, fearful and wary. Some muttered that this was the end; but my father and others hushed them, and commanded that the villagers be prepared, but were not to fight unless a blow was thrown by the outsiders first.

  The people on the hill came on, and as they gained the ground immediately to the west of the village, my father and the other men became restless, but not violent. The goats and sheep had been pastured further up the valley, and those indoors were all accounted for; but the men still kept a keen eye on their fields, and a steady grip on their axes.

  And then they were upon us.

  And the wailing and screams we had heard, growing louder on their approach, was now a din, sailing about our homes as the runners half-staggered, half-leapt through the village.

  But they did not stop.

  To our surprise, and relief, they carried on, down towards the river; and as they charged towards it, and plunged headlong into, along, and around it, we saw why: for in our haste to protect our houses and our farms, and with the sun so bright in the sky, we had failed to notice that every one of these poor souls was on fire, their hands and hair and clothes filled with a strange-looking flame, that did not seem to grow, but rather leapt about their bodies like liquid gold, cool and angry in the morning sunlight.

  We watched for many moments, silent, aghast, stamping out the smouldering earth that marked their passage, until their screaming stopped, or could no longer be heard. The stench of roasting flesh filled the air like a curse. And then some of the men went down to the river, to see if any had survived; but none had, being all drowned or broken at the neck from falling, if they were not burned. And the men returned much later with sorrow on their faces, and none spoke of what they had seen for many days afterwards.

  When they did, they used a word I had heard before only in legend: they spoke of the drakes.

  “I’d say they were travellers, from the look of them; they weren’t local. They must have been caught out in the open; easy prey…”

  “Prey for what…?”

  “Did you see the flames that burned them? The bright colour of it? It wasn’t like natural fire…”

  “This is the Witch’s doing. She’s woken the drakes, and now we will all suffer for it…”

  “The drakes? Surely they are a myth…!”

  “They’re no myth. They’re as real as you and I.”

  “But if drakes killed those people, why haven’t we seen them…?”

  “Probably a youngster, trying out the reach of his fire… We’ll see them soon enough. When they’re full grown…”

  “They say the emperor is beside himself with grief, and simply stays in his room and weeps…”

  “He’d be better off helping his subjects! Where are our armies…?”

  “I’ve heard he’s offered his throne to any man who can kill the Witch…”

  “Only a fool would take up that challenge…”

  “The court is already rife with her spies, I’m told. She’s biding her time, testing our defences, waiting for the right moment to strike…”

  “She will have her way. No one can stand against her now. Anyone who does will face the fury of the drakes…”

  And they said much else beside, in a similar vein; but my father said nothing, and only smoked his pipe and was silent.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Our village lay at the westernmost tip of the Fallen Range, that snakes from the Fields of the Sentinel in far Ustus to meet the broad plains of Sophia to the south. As the mountains start to diminish, many miles from their zenith in High Meadow, they are split by the great tongue of the Anvil, on its way to the Skyless Delta, and the sea. Our ancestors made their home high up on the slopes above the river, where you can see your enemy approach from many leagues on a clear day, but where the ground is hard and good only for pasture. When it rained, as it did often, there was little protection against the wind and the storms that battered our houses and frightened our livestock, and the going was always tough. But this had been our home, for more generations than even the oldest among us could count; and a man will defend his home, to the death if needs be, against all who would take or destroy it.

  And so, as my twelfth birthday drew near, and with the summer shortening into autumn, came those trials, recounted here, which were to change my life forever, and forge for me a new one, hard and brutal as flint.

  Things had been quieter in the village in the two years since the outsiders had plunged into the river to escape the drakes’ fire. The winters seemed less harsh, and the summers less fierce, and the sheep did not go mad or stampede, nor the horses. Folk smiled without thinking, and were quicker to pass the time of day; and children played once more in the woods, and ran careless along the river. Some of the men who had left even returned from the towns, and brought their women and children with them, and people said the shadow was lifting; perhaps the Witch was dead, or had gone quiet once more, or was simply weary of her sport and had moved on to others. No one had heard of the drakes reappearing, or of any recent sightings of the Watchers - those men who served the Witch - or of the Third Eye that they wore. All seemed calm, and even cheerful, in the valley, and when my mother’s cousin gave birth - the first child to be born in the village since my own brother, eight years before - all agreed it was a good omen.

  But it was not so.

  I was old enough now to accompany my father on his trips to town, driving the packhorse over the low-walled bridge that crossed the Stave, the Anvil’s gentler brother. From there we would make our way east, through the rolling hills of Dulcet, the sweeter and lusher lands of our neighbours, with their pretty villages and neat farms. We did not envy them their prosperity, nor resent that their lives were easier than ours; it was almost a sin amongst my people to be ashamed of who we were, and where we had come from.

  So on a fine and sun-drunk day in mid-September, as on many days before it, we walked along together, the horse labouring beside us, my father touching the brim of his hat to those we passed, and they greeting him in return, often by his name. And he and I would play games – guessing how many strides it would take to walk to Ampar, the emperor’s Golden City, far to the north, or competing to spot otters at play in the streams, or kestrels on the wing. And so we passed the time, until we reached Hale, the nearest town.

  Hale was a trading-post that had grown lazily along the banks of the Stave, and, though hardly large by the reckoning of northerners, seeme
d big enough to those of us who lived in the south. Its one central street meandered for over half a mile, the shops and stalls on either side having a temporary air which testified to its busyness: buildings always seemed to be being torn down and rebuilt, or else something new taking their place.

  The top end of the street was dominated by the Trading House. Its slanted roof and high, narrow windows would have looked perfectly ordinary had they been on a smaller scale, but it was their very vastness which impressed: towering above you, intimidating despite their great ugliness. This is the place where everything happens, they said. Men are just ants, they whispered. Later in my life, after I had seen the forest-houses of the Green Cities, and walked across the Bridge of Socus, high above the towers of Ampar, I would not reckon the Hale Trading House so great. But now it is lost, like so much of my past, and as a child I thought it terrifying.

  Beside the House there was a large enclosure, and we left our horse there, tethered and guarded by two young grooms, who spoke so little they might as well be mute, and bit every coin my father handed to them. Then we unstrapped our bags of yarn from the animal’s back, and went inside.

  My eyes blinked in the noise and chaos within. A great press of men – for there were few, if any, women – filled almost every inch of space, but somehow they managed to avoid crushing or elbowing each other as they moved around the building. Their hands and mouths flew out and open, there was sweat on their brows from the effort of making themselves heard, and they had grass or tobacco to chew when they were silent. The currents of conversation settled back and forth, and finally echoed up into the high ceiling; and all of it sounded meaningless to my young ears. But my father nudged his way gently through the crowd, determined and careful of his feet, and I followed him doggedly, as I would have done anywhere, for I loved him.

  We were about half-way across the room when he stopped by a tall reed of a man, whom I knew from previous visits on market day. His name was Silas Lode, and he nodded down at me, and I sulked a little back.

  “Joseph,” he said to my father in greeting.

  “Silas. Good cheer. It’s a hot one.”

  “Ah…” Silas replied, dismissively, and he turned to spit. “I’ve known hotter.” He gestured to the bags, which we had set down for a moment on the floor.

  “Should fetch a bit,” said my father. “Got a promise from Drew Peters to buy.”

  “There’s an honest man,” said Silas, coughing long and loudly. “Not like those Sunnucks boys…” And he nodded towards a pair of surly-looking young men, badly shaven and overfed, in the corner of the room. “Their merchants are everywhere now – even as far as Lowcastle – and every time they call they’re always offerin’ a lower price. The market’s in a glut, they say; I’m bein’ generous givin’ you this much, they cry… And then they’re adding water to the wool, and Old Man Sunnucks’s looms are working night and day…” He shook his head. “Nobody ever sees him now, ‘cept his banker.”

  My father laughed.

  “I wouldn’t worry about Sunnucks. He can’t go on playing the nabob forever. Besides, whatever a man does is repaid in kind, sooner or later.”

  Silas nodded slowly. Then his look changed, and he lowered his voice.

  “You seen anything, out there by the river?” he asked, and fixed my father with a strange look.

  My father swayed a little, but his face remained absolutely still.

  “How d’you mean?” he said, quietly.

  “I mean - anything unusual…” said Silas Lode.

  “Don’t waste my time with riddles, Silas. Seen what?”

  Silas moved in a little closer to my father, and touched his arm.

  “The Witch,” he said, his voice dropping near a whisper. “Ben Cotton has seen her – seen her handiwork, that is – not a week previous. Out by the Small Woods he was, not far from your way. Seen a great commotion down in the combe there, and when he goes to investigate, he finds there’s a great swath of tree just gone – must’ve been a storm, he thinks, but the skies are full clear, and no cloud to be seen.” And he paused, and glanced at me. “Then he sees it. There’s a young woman, and at first he thinks she might be hurt; only she’s black all over from being burned, like in a fire, and she’s tied to a stake in the centre of this clearing; and she’s been split – down the middle, like her belly burst right open – and inside he sees something so awful he can’t hardly bring himself to say. He…” And here he leaned in to whisper in my father’s ear, and, though I strained upwards on my toes, I could not catch it.

  My father’s face was dark. He looked at Silas for a while, who nodded with satisfaction.

  “Don’t you be scaring my daughter with this kind of talk, mister,” he said. And, though his voice was not raised, I do not think I ever heard him so angry.

  “Joseph, I just thought…”

  “I don’t care what you thought. Ben Cotton has been a wrong-headed fool for as long as anyone can remember. Most likely he made the whole thing up.”

  “Joseph…”

  “I don’t want you repeating this tittle-tattle within my earshot again, Silas, or you can consider our friendship at an end. Now point me the way to Drew Peters’ table, and don’t delay me here any longer, unless you’ve got business to make…”

  Silas stared at him blankly, then simply pointed to a large table, a good few strides away, with many men around it. And my father grabbed my hand, picked up the bags, and marched me away, and I could feel through the tight grip of his fingers that he was trembling.

  Drew Peters was an old friend, a man trusted and respected, and by some a little feared - though only by those who had something they wished to hide. He was thick-set, about fiftyish, and his hair hung in a cloud of grey from beneath a battered fedora, and his beard was broad. I never saw him smile, but he was always pleased to see my father.

  “Lanark,” he said in greeting.

  “Peters,” said my father, and the two men embraced across the table.

  “How’re things?”

  My father nodded.

  “Fair, Drew. I can’t complain.”

  “Aye. And this’d be your little wren…? Grown tall, in’t she?”

  “She can speak for herself now, Drew.” And he turned to me. “Esther. Mr Peters asked you a question.”

  My eyes were glued to the ground; but I summoned my courage, and looked the other man full in the face.

  “I can kill a blackbird with one shot now, mister - and it moving through the air.” And I pushed out my bottom lip defiantly.

  Drew Peters said nothing, though the men around him laughed.

  “Aye, I’m sure you can. A couple of years and you’ll be wrestling the boys, I shouldn’t wonder…”

  “I can wrestle them now!” I replied, and the men laughed again, though my father frowned, and I knew some joke had been made at my expense.

  “Well, there’s plenty of time for all that. Saw old Silas had a face like a dead sheep after talking to you, Joseph. What did you tell him? He ain’t been boring you about his gammy leg again, has he…?”

  My father was silent, and looked at the floor for a moment.

  “No,” he said. “He spoke about the Witch.”

  At mention of the Witch, the men said nothing. One or two of them wouldn’t look at us, and some drifted off, to neighbouring tables. But Drew Peters gave the merest of nods, and said no more, but opened his ledger, and talked nothing but business after that.

  Later, as the two of us walked home with the old packhorse, the bags of yarn sold and the sun sliding down the sky, my father said very little, except to point out the odd squirrel, or to stop and listen to the hum and dither of the birds. But when we got home, he hugged me especially close before I went to bed, and looked in on me in the night, though I pretended to be fast asleep.

  I wish now that I had not.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It was the sound I heard first: and it seemed so distant, so far away, that it could not possibly be r
eal, only a whisper or an echo. But then I was aware that it was suddenly near, and loud, and somehow terrifying, even before I knew what it was. It sounded like an animal, or rather a chorus of animals - but no animals I had ever heard, and I knew all the beasts and birds about. It was a high, shrill cry; a cry of mockery.

  I opened my eyes. The room seemed endless, without walls, and for a moment I thought I must still be asleep, or else transported to some unfamiliar place. But then I realized I was in my room after all, and the harsh tang in my nostrils confirmed why I had been so confused.

  The room was full of smoke.

  I think I started to cry then. I believe I cried all that terrible day, but I did not hesitate to act. I was out of my bed, and stumbling for the door, and I almost opened it…

  My mother’s warning came to me, of how the air can feed a fire, and I knew if there were flames out in the corridor I could be burned alive. I pulled back my hand, and staggered around the edge of my bed for the window.

  The sound was growing now. Where before it was muted and distant, now it sucked the air from around it as the fire did, and the heat of the burning house also struck me like a slap to the face: I knew I had to get out, to get outside on to the cobbles of the yard, to feel cool stone beneath my bare feet, to stay alive. I knew with an absolute certainty that I had to stay alive, that somehow there was more depending on it than my own survival. I put my knee up on the edge of the windowsill, and found it was harder to climb on to than I had expected; my mind rose and fell with the action of my lungs, and I felt the smoke that was choking them was also choking my brain, poisoning its workings, leaving me reeling like a sailor too sudden on the shore.