Breaking Bones

by Helen Slavin

  The three women stood just up the bank, unhurried and observing him. The youngest was rocking Ethan, singing a slow, sad song that made Calum feel everything he had ever felt in his whole life, the bad overlaid with the better, the good. The other two women were smiling at him, each held out a hand to help him up the slippery river’s edge.

  “This way, dear heart. You’re safe now,” the middle-aged woman said, her hand beckoning him. Calum took their hands.

  Ethan stopped crying.

  10

  Forfeit

  There were no more Trespassers at Havoc Wood for a short time. The shadow of Halloween was cast very far. Hettie Way pottered in the garden, waiting.

  Anna came in silence, her footsteps joining those of her grandmother in the bean bed, her hands reaching up to tie in the runners. They said almost nothing each afternoon.

  “Nothing?” Vanessa had quizzed her mother, wanting an answer, a way of helping her daughter. “How can you say nothing, day after day?”

  “What is there to be said?” Hettie Way reasoned.

  “She stays?” Vanessa had no fight in her. Hettie nodded.

  “Most nights.”

  * * *

  Most nights Hettie Way let Cob Cottage take care of Anna, ravel her in dreams as Hettie herself headed out on her patrols, banishing every Poacher and Trespasser fool enough to step within the boundaries of Havoc Wood.

  * * *

  One night, when Anna had headed to her mother’s for the evening and Hettie was alone, she took the rowing boat out across the lake. The boat halted at a certain spot, outlined by the moon, and, pushing her sleeve back, Hettie dipped her hand into the water. It was black-deep, blue-cold. The cold seeped into her, making her bones ring out with a deep, sonorous note.

  This time, she did not see the Pike. Instead, she saw, drifting across the water towards her, a rowing boat, trailing woodsmoke, licking flame.

  11

  So Long, Farewell

  There would be no calling in of debts, for now at least. Nuala had secured that much in the aftermath of her failure. Of course, the new bargain she had struck with Thinne had been blacker than even the last, but, once she had the wood, once she was Mistress, then she could deal with Thinne.

  It was growing dark, despite the fact that it was July. Already by five o’clock the skies were overcast, smothering the light as Hettie Way made her patrol of Havoc Wood. No one travelled today, not Visitor nor Guest, Trespasser nor Poacher. Hettie Way was alone.

  It was completely dark by the time she found herself on the eastern path to the cottage. The water lapped a little, the sound beautiful in the still night air.

  She was aware that Nuala followed her, tracking her like prey, and yet Hettie Way stepped towards the porch anyway. The first blow came from behind, winding her. Hettie stumbled, her face grazing against the wood as she fell back against the porch steps. Nuala’s foot pressed down on Hettie’s left arm.

  “I pin you.” Nuala’s voice was venom.

  “Don’t do this.” Hettie’s voice was low and level, a warning. Nuala, seeing Hettie was not afraid, faltered, her arm twisted up above her head.

  “I pin you.” Nuala spat the words as her arm dropped, Hettie’s humerus cracking under the violence of the blow. Hettie did not flinch.

  “Don’t do this.”

  Nuala twisted the arm harder. The pain spiralled up into Hettie’s shoulder. The bone magic seeped, rich and dark as treacle.

  “I pin you.” Nuala’s voice carried binding with it. Hettie felt the old power that Nuala had borrowed or stolen. Nuala’s arm rose again. Hettie saw the strength in it, making the Red Wrangle scar blacken and burn against it. What had she bargained to be loaned power that rivalled Red Wrangle?

  “Don’t do this.”

  Hettie’s final warning whispered out in cold edges. It carried frost. Nuala felt it, her eyes flashing fury at Hettie before she stepped back, her foot coming to rest on Hettie’s left leg.

  Nuala, bold and cruel, her hand clutching the rock, raising it into the night before her arm, lashed down once more.

  “I break you.”

  There was a hairline crack in Nuala Whitemain’s voice, and, just as the blow was struck and her own skull cracked, Hettie heard it.

  The bone magic rushed, but it did not flood Nuala. Instead, it scoured her, searing through her frame as if all her bones might break. She could not stand, slumped forward, the rock still in her grasp, Hettie Way’s blood spattered on her face. The fragments of skull sticking to her hand sparkled like burning saltpetre, intense and heated. The shadows of the wood darkened, and the wind rose to a howl. It seemed to Nuala Whitemain that every leaf shook, every bough shuddered and set against her, and, at her wrist, the Red Wrangle jabbed barbs into her skin, lodging deeper, deeper, her hand becoming pale and veined and lifeless as marble.

  Nuala breathed hard, the breath in tight gasps, unwilling. She threw fire sparks at the thatch of Cob Cottage. They fizzed and blurred to blue before dying.

  With a screech of fury, Nuala threw more fire at the thatch, banked up kindling against the side of the cottage and lit that. It burned out. The wind wound up, the breeze making the trees sound as though they were whispering. As Nuala stood, the wind shoved at her, forcing her steps backwards, this way, that way. She leaned into the wind, her protests snatched into the gale, silenced. The gust battered her, knocking her into the side of the porch.

  This was not what was meant to happen. Nuala let out a howl. As she did so, the wind dropped out as if a switch had been thrown, letting Nuala’s cry echo out, wild and wrong. As she heard it, she heard Hettie’s warning, “Don’t do this.” Her heartbeat raced. What had she done?

  She saw the shadows stretch and cluster. This was not what was meant to happen. As they began to move, four-footed, sniffing out her scent, Nuala Whitemain ran.

  * * *

  Hettie Way’s ghost lifted itself clear of her broken bones. It would look as if she had fallen down the steps, cracked her head on the nearby rock, an old lady who probably shouldn’t have been living alone in a wood. Vanessa would know the truth.

  Now, Hettie’s ghost waited, and time sifted by differently, rushing like a wind until, from her post on the flat rock at the shoreline, Hettie Way saw the hearse bounce and jar its way down through the trees, her granddaughters manhandling the coffin.

  “We’re doing the right thing,” they reassured one another.

  As they stacked kindling, fetched flowers, set the spark to the flame, Hettie Way smiled to herself.

  Slow Poison

  Helen Slavin

  1

  The Visitor

  Cob Cottage shuddered in the wind, the rain lashing on the windows like tears as the Way sisters stared at the rounded object on the floor at Charlie’s feet. It was a head. Definitely, without any doubt, this was a man’s head. The wind howled mournfully as Emz looked down at the rather waxen closed eye corpse face, the flesh hanging a bit flaccid just there, where the cheek met the mat, the hair streaked across the forehead where it was brown with blood, but, if she looked for a longer moment she saw the ghost image of his real face, offering her a glimpse of how he had looked when alive. This lost face looked up at her, tired and sad and weary. She knelt beside him, reached to push the hair out of his face, where a strand straggled across his eye and into his slightly open mouth.

  Emz touching the head seemed to break a spell that had drifted over them. The waif-like woman, who had carried this burden, darted forward to retrieve her fallen treasure, her small thin fingers pulling the rags around it.

  “What are you doing?” she snapped, holding the head tight to her body. Emz held up her hands in a small surrendering gesture.

  “Tidying his hair,” she said in a quiet voice. This answer wiped the cross expression from the woman’s weather bedraggled face and her shoulders dropped slightly before she reached again for her bravado and drew herself up. She was distracted for a moment, stashing the tattered package into
her ragged coat. The material, Anna noted, was thin and black and worn and it was torn in places so that she looked as if she had been clawed by wild animals. Anna looked up into her face. Pale. Tired. Strained.

  She was breathing hard, her lips pinched as she regarded the three of them.

  “This is Cob Cottage?” the woman asked, her eyes darting quick glances at the furniture, the windows. “In Havoc Wood? I’m at the right place?”

  Anna’s muscle memory kicked her a little.

  “Come far?” she asked. The woman backed off a step as if stung, and, Charlie noted, clenched her fist at her side as if in readiness for a fight.

  “Where’s Hettie Way?” The woman’s voice was strong, but Anna could hear the undercurrent of uncertainty, recognised it from her own voice in the last year. Anna’s head filled with a smoky image of the boat carrying their grandmother’s coffin, burning its way across the lake. She found she couldn’t speak for a moment. “You aren’t her.” The woman asked again, angrier this time, “Where is she?”

  “She died.” It was Charlie who spoke, brief and to the horrible point. At this the woman looked quite as distraught as the Ways. Her early bravado drained out of her with the rainwater that was puddled on the mat beneath her feet. She had looked skinny before but now she looked ethereal, a pearly grey tone glossed over her skin. Anna was about to say something more welcoming, but their weary guest was crumpling like a paper bag, the head once more rolling from her grasp. Anna stepped forward with a sharp cry, her fingers clutching at the falling woman’s sleeve as Charlie lurched to the rescue, arms outstretched.

  “Help,” Charlie yelped. As Charlie and Emz lifted the slight figure, Anna pulled over the long one-armed sofa. Cushions propped their visitor up as Anna, who by now was shaking, moved to the kitchen to put the kettle on and start to grill a cheese sandwich. There was safety of sorts, in food, for Anna at least.

  Emz picked up the severed head and tried to wrap it up in the rags it had been transported in. They were not up to the task, too raggedy and tattered to be of any use at all. Unwilling to throw them away Emz put them to one side and reached for a clean tea towel. That still didn’t feel right. To top it all as she put the head down on the table it began to roll slightly once more, as if, scary thought, don’t think the scary thought Emz, it might still be alive. Emz took her fine wool scarf from the chair by the window and wrapped the head in that before placing it in the crook of the visitor’s arm between her and the sofa. Safe.

  There was a sudden silence, broken only by the kettle sounds. The Ways looked at each other. Charlie made a face at Anna who shrugged and then they both looked at Emz as if she might have an explanation.

  “What are you looking at me for?” Emz asked. Her sisters hesitated for a second.

  “It saves having to look at the head,” Charlie reasoned.

  “What would Grandma do?” Anna’s face was creased into a frown as she turned back through the arch as the kettle boiled up. There was the sound of teapot and teabags and chinking of mugs so that life seemed still to be real and happening.

  “I don’t think Grandma Hettie knew everyone who arrived here,” Charlie decided.

  “No. Well, obvs. And this is being the Gamekeepers isn’t it? Marshalling and patrolling…” Emz cast an anxious glance at the prone figure of their visitor, “and… stuff.” Charlie gave a doubtful snort.

  “Nothing is easy in Havoc Wood,” Anna said as she stepped back through the arch with a tray laden with the leftover scones from yesterday, the freshly melted cheese sandwich and the tea things. The scent of the cheese sandwich seemed to revive their guest in the same manner as a defibrillator. She sat upright, threatened, and at once Emz stepped forward.

  “Here,” she said, pointing to the scarfed parcel. “He’s here. It’s alright.” The woman grabbed for him, struggled with her burden, the roundness of the head sitting uneasily within the too small confines of her jacket, her knuckles whitening with the effort of holding it to her.

  “Would you like something to eat? A drink?” Anna smiled. The woman eyed the food as she took in a deep breath.

  “When did Hettie Way pass?” the woman asked. “When was word sent?”

  The Way sisters sought each other’s gaze before Anna took in a deep breath.

  “In July.” The brief announcement was all she could manage. The woman began to count back on her fingers and at the conclusion of that she fell deeper into thoughts.

  “She was gone before I set off,” the woman mused. “Who are you?” she glared at them, the glare sparking against Charlie.

  “We’re her granddaughters,” she declared, folding her arms like a barricade. “We’re the Gamekeepers.”

  The visitor took in this information along with a further deeper breath and Anna asked, in a soft cat’s whisker of a voice, “Would you like some tea?” There was a silence, as if she had offered poison; no one moved. With a decisive clearing of her throat, Charlie reached forward and picked up the knife. This action seemed to rattle the visitor and she rose up a little in her seat, defensive, but, rather than stab anyone, Charlie cut the melting, unctuous cheese sandwich into four quarters and took the first one.

  “Be careful, it’s hot,” Anna warned. Charlie gave her an impatient look and blew gently on the hot bread and cheese before popping it into her mouth. Anna and Emz quickly understood and reached for their pieces. The scent of the toastie was deeply savoury, Anna having sprinkled just a pinch of paprika, a hint of cayenne and a smudge of mustard into the buttery, cheesy filling.

  The woman flexed her shoulders back to stretch them and reached for her morsel. She nibbled at the edge. Her blonde hair was drying in the warm fug of Cob Cottage and it was beginning to make her look like a dandelion clock, wispy, flyaway. As she nibbled a little more, a little more, Charlie buttered a scone, Emz reached for a triangle of toast and Anna poured a cup of tea.

  “So,” Anna said as the three sisters unconsciously took up their triangulated positions around the visitor, “come far?”

  The visitor took a sip of tea and nodded.

  “Far enough.”

  The exchange of these few words settled something between them. The visitor was not forthcoming with any further information. Charlie was growing impatient with politeness and diplomacy.

  “What’s your name?” Charlie asked. The visitor took a moment’s pause and so Charlie met her half way. “I’m Charlie. Charlotte if you’re being formal,” she said. Their visitor narrowed her eyes for a second and decided to trust them, a little.

  “Ailith.” Her voice was soft and low.

  “Want to tell us where you started out? How your journey began?” Charlie prompted, her arms unfolded now but leaning forward, elbows on her knees, interrogative.

  “Started out a long way away from here.” The visitor’s breathing was easier, her face less strained. “Back… home.” The thought pained her, they all saw it, even Charlie backing off a little in sympathy with this.

  “Who’s your… who is the…?” Emz nodded to the bulge in Ailith’s coat. Their visitor moved her hand once more, protective. The sisters could see where exhaustion and worry were making her drift. Charlie reached for a buttered piece of scone, shuffled it onto a plate for the woman.

  “Here,” she said. “Eat.”

  Without asking Emz moved the pot of jam forward.

  “Hettie Way made the jam, if that helps,” she smiled. “Last autumn. From the blackberries at the edge of the wood.” The rain began to drum against the thatch, against the round oak window. Anna felt afraid, as if the door might blow open any moment and Ailith would be lost to them, whisked out into the wind.

  “They killed him.” Ailith’s voice had sunk to a whisper, as if she was talking to herself. “That’s where it started. Where they killed him.”

  Ailith reached up, her hand making measured swipes at her tears. The Way sisters did not move, only their eyes reaching for each other, realising that it was nearly one o’clock and it looke
d like it was going to be a long night ahead of them.

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