by Helen Slavin
Breaking Bones
A Witch Ways Whisper
Helen Slavin
About the Author
Helen Slavin was born in Heywood in Lancashire in 1966. She was raised by eccentric parents on a diet of Laurel and Hardy, William Shakespeare and the Blackpool Illuminations. Educated at her local comp her favourite subjects at school were English and Going Home.
After The University of Warwick she worked in many jobs including, plant and access hire, a local government Education department typing pool, and a vasectomy clinic. A job as a television scriptwriter gave her the opportunity to spend all day drinking tea, living in a made-up fantasy world and getting paid for it (sometimes).
Helen has been a professional writer for fifteen years. Her first novel The Extra Large Medium was chosen as the winner in the Long Barn Books competition run by Susan Hill.
A paragliding Welsh husband and two children distract her and give her ample opportunity to spend all day drinking tea, nagging about homework and washing pants for England. In the wee small hours she still keeps a bijou flat in that fantasy world of writing. When not working with animals and striving for world peace, Helen enjoys the music of Elbow and baking bread. Her favourite colour is purple and if she had to be stranded on a desert island with someone it would be Ray Mears (alright, George Clooney is very good looking but can he make fire with a stick? No. See?)
She now lives, with her family, in Trowbridge, Wiltshire where, when she’s not writing, she’s asleep. Or in Tesco.
* * *
If you’d like to hear more from Helen, visit her website, www.helenslavin.com
Also By Helen Slavin
The Extra Large Medium
The Stopping Place
Cross My Heart
From a Distance
Little Lies
After the Andertons
To the Lake
Will You Know Me?
The Witch Ways Series
Crooked Daylight
The Ice King
Slow Poison
Breaking Bones
First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Agora Books
Agora Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd
55 New Oxford Street, London WC1A 1BS
Copyright © Helen Slavin, 2019
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
1
The Path Through the Wood
In Woodcastle you could hear the primary school bell dinging brightly at hometime. The cool, clear sound would roll off the curtain wall of the castle and ping itself at the bell in the church tower to alert the senses of busy parents and grumpy pensioners. Some hurried to the larder for milk and the oven for biscuits, others rushed to stand at their property boundary ready to wave a curmudgeonly stick at the apple-cheeked happiness that hurtled by.
The schoolchildren would flit out of the school gates and funnel themselves into the small, low-beamed shop “Sweetie’s” — a brown and sticky emporium on Dark Gate Street, lit by very little daylight through the original dimpled glass windows. The rows of tall clear jars with their bounty of crackling, crunching, chewy delights appealed to every child in the town. To most of the junior population of Woodcastle, the instruction to “Eat Your Greens” could be twisted into meaning you must munch your way through a bag of sherbet limes or gooseberry sours.
Only one child resisted the jewel-bright, boiled confections. She didn’t like them. They were too sticky, too sickly. They had a metallicky aftertaste that was unpleasant because, as she had been told by Mrs Walters, the housekeeper, they were extruded through a machine in a factory outside Castlebury.
“It’s a big tall place with big tall towers, and big tall plumes of smoke chug out of it every day.” Mrs Walters was rubbing her gnarled fingers through a mixing bowl of flour and butter. There was a Kilner jar of caster sugar awaiting its turn along with two speckled-brown eggs that Mrs Walters had asked Winn to fetch from the hencoops. There was cream, too. “Revolting stuff for revolting children. They have rats running up and down the belts in that place. My brother knows that for a fact.”
“Because your brother is a rat-catcher.” Winn recalled earlier, more bloodthirsty conversations and the afternoon when Mrs Walters’ brother had come to Hartfield with his little dog, Whip. She had been allowed to witness the hunt, had admired the skill and speed of the little dog pitted against the rats. Winn harboured a desire to be a rat-catcher when she grew up just so that she might have a little dog exactly like Whip.
The scones, when they were baked, were left to cool on the rack by the windowsill. There was a pot of jam being sourced from the big pantry, and Winn was wrapping a wedge of cheese from the dairy. Mrs Walters made the cheese at Hartfield, and the resulting rich and complex flavour of Hartfield Hard was renowned at the market in town. Mrs Walters made more money from selling cheeses than she did from her actual job as a housekeeper.
This was just as well, because Winn’s father, Sir Henry Hartley-Hartfield, was miserly. He was miserly with his staff, the entire of Hartfield being run by Mrs Walters. There was a gardener once or twice a week, Mr Vasey. He smoked his pipe in the potting shed as Mrs Walters double-dug trenches for climbing beans. The bulk of the domestic tasks were also assigned to Mrs Walters, who, aside from the cooking and child-rearing, was often to be found pointing walls, replacing ridge tiles, and glazing the orangery. In addition, she could strip down and repair any of the cars and motorbikes in Sir Henry’s extensive collection.
He was miserly with his daughter, and this had been a blessing. Winifred had not been sent to boarding school in the family tradition, because Sir Henry did not think she was worth the expenditure. The girl was not pretty and not clever and, with the way the world was going to ruin anyhow, she would be better off learning how to strip down the Enfield and tinker with the plumbing. She was not wife material. It was a fact, and Sir Henry Hartley-Hartfield was a man who dealt in facts.
Her mother had died in childbirth and, if the truth were told, rather than view Winifred as a lasting testament to his stern but deep love for his wife, he viewed the child as an underhanded assassin.
* * *
The underhanded assassin was, today, being entrusted with taking a basket of scones and bread rolls, jam and pickles to old Mrs Massey, who lived at the other side of Leap Woods from Hartfield.
“Now, what are your instructions?” Mrs Walters had folded the spotted teacloth over the top of the basket of provisions and was leaning on the worktop looking very seriously at Winn Hartley-Hartfield.
“Don’t cut through Havoc Wood.”
* * *
Winn knew Leap Woods like the back of her hand. It was her favourite playground. It was easy to stray into the wood through the gate in the walled garden at the rear of Hartfield Hall. Winn lifted the latch and headed out, closing the gate behind her.
It was a lovely, sun-filled afternoon, and Winn picked her way carefully through the trees. She was following a path. This path did not go anywhere near the cinder track that was laid through the wood just here, nor did it step onto the other tracks of bared earth or small stones. This path was one she had been shown on many occasions by Mrs Walters, and she stuck to it.
She was sweating a little bit. The basket she was carrying was heavy. Winn was glad of the errand though. It had been, as usual, a horrid day at sc
hool. Other children, she thought, were scary sometimes and often cruel. They were a puzzle to her, and piece by piece she was solving it, working out that she was not part of their picture. That indeed their picture was very small and black and white, and she didn’t want to be in it.
Winn was thinking over the story they had read this afternoon with Mr Chideock, which had been full of knights and featured Woodcastle Castle. She was imagining herself on a horse, a rather magnificent beast, not a puny little pony like Patricia Henryson had, and she wouldn’t give it a stupid name either. Whoever called their horse Monty? No. She would call her horse Warrior or Agrippa. Yes. Agrippa. So there she was in armour. Bronze armour, because bronze had a good colour in the sunlight, not shiny, better than golden, and last week they had done a history lesson where Mr Chideock had shown them how people in the Bronze Age made bronze, and there had been a little fire and a crucible. Crucible. That was also a good word.
Winn’s mind wandered into bronze-cast battles and, not surprisingly, took her feet with it.
She had crossed the borderline into Havoc Wood and not really noticed. The path was cinder now, and it was only when she noticed how dirty her socks and shoes were that she realised what she had done. She stopped with a little hard breath. She knew her way around Havoc Wood, too, but she had only ever been allowed here in company with Mrs Walters and Mrs Way, the Gamekeeper. She looked about her. To the right of her was Pike Lake, just visible through the trees. She could not see Cob Cottage itself, because it was on the opposite shore of the lake. She could tell where Old Castle Road was, and she considered. It was a long way to walk back to Leap Woods and go around to Mrs Massey’s cottage. From here it would be quicker to just keep going. She needed to go up the hill a little way and onto the path through the birch trees. It was lovely there, the bark all white and silvery. Yes. It would be as quick. If she turned back she’d be late, and Mrs Massey and Mrs Walters would be worried.
Winn walked on with purpose, her mind concentrating now on her feet and where they were placed. It was vital in Havoc Wood that you didn’t stray off your path. That was what Mrs Walters and Mrs Way had always said — “your path”. Winn knew which one she could take for safe passage. Not the bare stones. Never through the bracken. This one. This path. This way.
Except that after half an hour she didn’t seem to be getting any further on. Her heart was panicking a bit now and she wanted to cry but thought that, if she didn’t find her way soon, she might cry later instead when she really had something to cry about. It was getting darker.
There was a creak that poked itself into Winn’s ears. She halted. No. She couldn’t hear anything. Not a thing. She took another three steps. Except that was odd in itself, because she ought to be able to hear the birds. It was March, after all, and they were all fighting for territory and mates. Winn held her breath. There the sound was again, a distinct crack this time, as if someone had trodden on a branch. And still no birds. Why were there no birds?
She stayed very still and breathed in shallow little puffs so that she couldn’t hear herself breathe. There might be a bird of prey near. That would make all the wildlife silent. Winn looked up. Above her, the bare arms of the tree reached into an empty white sky. She looked back at the path she was going to take. She shouldn’t dawdle. If she was late, Mrs Massey would be worried.
She walked on for a few more minutes before the stone almost missed her. She was startled, thinking at first that the object that grazed by her cheek must be a bird. But as she staggered back and reached up to the hurt place on her face, she saw the stone where it had fallen to the ground. She felt tears stinging inside her, her breath catching. She looked around. There was no one to be seen, and she could not think where the stone might have come from. She had blood on her hand. It made her feel light and panicky. She needed to hurry.
As she picked up pace, she stumbled, sprawling down, her ankle catching against a tree root, her face scraped once more, this time by bark from a fallen tree. She began to cry and to feel smaller than she had ever felt in her life. Her hands were grazed with dirt. She stood up, wiped her hands on her cardigan. The basket had spilled, and the things were spread around. Winn took wobbly steps to retrieve them; nothing was broken. The scones smelt lovely, vanilla and cinnamon. She wiped at her face; all different bits of her were stinging now, and she was going to be in trouble for being late.
The second stone hit her square on the back of her head. She stumbled once more, but this time she did not fall. She scrambled and ran, ran hard and, most important of all, the most severe instruction she had ever been given by Mrs Way, she did not look back.
* * *
It had been a long haul uphill on a sunny day for Hettie Way. She had been waiting at the rendezvous for some time. This arrival, late as he was, was not unexpected and was only a visitor destined to be escorted through Havoc and onwards to the herepath at Yarl Hill. His safe passage request had been sent in good time. It had been a lovely day. Sunlight. Bright blue sky.
But, something. Hettie Way disliked the word “something”, as it left the world wide open to itself, but, on this occasion, ‘something’ was the word that kept digging at her. Something was amiss.
It was tiring working the wood. Hettie’s position as Gamekeeper had come down to her through many generations, and as a result of all those previous Gamekeepers, all of them Ways, Hettie’s senses were finely tuned. The edges of her hearing stretched into the distant edges of Havoc Wood, the sounds travelling to her, bouncing off the trunks of trees, skimming over the surface of Pike Lake. Scents were more to Hettie Way than to a bloodhound. Her sight was, to any optician, average for a human of her apparent age, but the periphery of her vision offered up the glimpses and shadows of her second sight.
Skewed. That was the proper word. It was in the angle of the shadows, a pulling, a stretching taut. Hettie looked at it out of the corner of her eye, the best way to view if you did not wish to draw attention to the fact that you were alert to something. This anomaly was not connected to the Visitor.
The Visitor was later, still, and in that far-flung border of Havoc Wood, Hettie Way grew beyond impatient. The skewing was sending a sharpness. It needed to be attended to. Just as she was making the decision to leave the Visitor to wait, the Visitor himself stepped out from a long shadow.
“Come far?” Hettie could hear how gruff she sounded. The Visitor, tall and thin as the shadow, stared at her.
“Come far, going further.” It was their password, and at once Hettie nodded and set off, leading the way through Havoc.
“Could you… could you halt the pace a little?” the Visitor requested as he stumbled for the third time. His legs reminded Hettie of a heron, and he seemed unused to walking through rough terrain. His pale face was flushed with a bluish red.
“No.” Hettie was certain. The skewing was intensifying, a slow, tidal drag, and there was a taste in the air, sharp and metallic, bloody.
“Is… is something amiss?” The Visitor was mauve with panic and exertion. Hettie pointed to a tumbled-down trunk covered with moss.
“Sit. Wait.”
He obeyed her instruction, and Hettie turned her mind fully. It came like a lightning flash. Someone was doing dark magic in her wood. The pictures flooded in. Location. Perpetrator. No. Victim. No. No. No. No. Hettie was whispering the word now, letting the wind carry it forward. She could not stop the magic from here, but she could flaw and fault it. “No, no, no,” she whispered, her feet beginning to drum their way over this earth beneath these feet, the one thing she was always certain of.
In the end it was almost like flying, her feet light, her pace swift, so that she burst from the trees like an owl, her black raincoat making mighty swooping wings behind her. A woman was bent over the small bruised child, the thin arm as delicately balanced as a twig underfoot.
Caught out, the white-haired woman leapt up like a flame, abandoning her magic. The child’s arm bone was unbroken, but Hettie clutched at her anyway,
her fingers clawing into the woman’s hair as she pulled away and pulled away, desperate for escape. Neither was giving up, and so the hair tore free, bloodied tufts left in Hettie’s fingers as Whitehair headed for the cover of the trees. Except, there was no cover for Trespassers such as her in Havoc Wood, so she kept on running, her heart pounding itself into a stone with the effort of outrunning the wrath of Hettie Way.
* * *
At Cob Cottage, Winn Hartley-Hartfield awoke to find herself wrapped in a blanket with Mrs Way looking down at her with a smile.
“Cup of tea?” Mrs Way asked. Winn nodded. There was nothing she liked better in all the world than a cup of tea, not even cream soda. Then she remembered her errand. As she started up in fear, Mrs Way put a hand on her arm, the one the lady had hurt. It felt instantly better. The fear ran away from Winn and hid in the very back of her mind.
“You were very strong,” Mrs Way told her. “And you ran very fast.”
“But I shouldn’t have wande—” Winn was horribly aware of her mistake. This was all her fault. She’d done the very thing she ought not.
“It was not your fault. It’s easy to wander into Havoc Wood. You were on the way to Mrs Massey’s, yes?” Mrs Way’s china cup chinkled like a small bell. It was comforting, and as Winn sipped at it the tea was delicious and refreshing. “You did all that you should. You were careful. You respected the wood,” Mrs Way assured her.
“But the lady was…” Winn thought of the twig snapping, and the thought brought back a memory of the lady in the wood, of her thin fingers squeezing at her arm. Mrs Way moved her hand to the place.
“Here?” she asked, her voice soft and low. Winn’s arm felt warmed, as if by sunlight. She nodded. She had run so hard, felt the woman’s hand grab for her, and she had dodged away, time and again. Then she had tripped, and the woman caught her. Winn felt the tears rising up, and she gave a little whimper.
