by Heide Goody
“I could use a day in the spa,” said Jenny.
Shazam, trying to gently wring out her cat, sighed in agreement. “A facial. One of those Swedish massages. Or just to lie back in a sauna or Jacuzzi.”
Jizzimus, who was no doubt in favour of giving a woman a ‘facial’, and regarded himself as a connoisseur of certain aspects of Swedish culture, opened his mouth. Jenny nudged him with the side of her shoe and sent him sprawling before he could speak.
“A day off would be enough,” said Jenny.
They regarded the choice of vegetable stir fry or cauliflower cheese at the self-serve buffet.
“All aboard to Trumpton!” shouted Jizzimus. “Stopping at Parpington, Fartmouth and Bum-Flap-on-Sea.”
“Vegetables don’t make me fart,” Jenny hissed at him.
“’Ow would you know?” said Jizzimus. “You do it in your sleep.”
She growled at him, irritated.
“I don’ mind,” he said. “I just sit on top of you an’ pretend I’m in an earthquake zone.”
George brought the first container into the shed. Caroline had offered to help him carry it, but the unstable stables were strictly out of bounds. His biceps bulged as he hefted it up to pour the contents through the sieve and into the pressure cooker.
“You can really smell the apples,” he said as the frothy piss-coloured liquid poured through.
Caroline blinked furiously. “Yes, I can also feel it.”
“I told you it was a bit … sharp. I had an Uncle Frank who was in the navy. Caught gonorrhoea from a girl in Southampton.”
He’d lost Caroline. “Ye-es?”
“He always said the best way to teach my brother and me about the importance of using protection was to show us what happened if you didn’t.”
George jiggled the can to get the last golden drops out. A dribble of glutinous apple pulp plopped onto the mass already collected in the sieve. “Looked just like that,” he said.
Caroline shuddered, lifted the sieve weighted by apple dregs aside and put the lid on the pressure cooker. “Do you tell that to all the women?” she asked. “Or just the ones you don’t ever want to have sex with?”
“Did I say I wanted to have sex with you, Miss Black?” he said, not unkindly.
“Not out loud, no.”
“Cheeky,” he said. “Anyway, I said he had gonorrhoea. Not me.”
“Guilty by association,” said Caroline, carrying the sieve outside.
Night had fallen. The seaward sky was a steely blue blanket sprinkled with stars. Caroline wasn’t sure where to dispose of several pounds of fermented apple mush but had no intention of hauling it up to main building. Telling herself that it was biodegradable and possibly even good for the soil, she tossed it against the side of the shed next door.
Back inside, she sealed the cooker, set the temperature and ushered George out. “And now we let nature take its course.”
She looked at George and squeezed his muscly upper arm. “Another time and I’d be telling you to take me back to your place.”
“Again: cheeky,” he said, this time a little more serious. “I’ve not got anything against the older woman—”
“Whatever!” she interrupted. “I’ve got a night-time herb expedition to attend.”
They gathered on the lawn by the teaching hut: Jenny, Kay, Caroline, Dee and Sabrina. Sabrina wore stout wellies and a potholer’s head torch, carried a wicker-basket full of empty jam jars in one hand and a knobbly walking stick in the other. She looked ready to tame the wilderness, one jarful at a time. Jenny, whose clothing choices were still limited to those that Dee had magicked up for her, wondered if her white-soled plimsolls were going to survive the night.
“Ur, first,” said Sabrina, “we must regard the moon.”
Dutifully, they turned to look at the moon.
“And what kind of moon is that?” asked Sabrina.
“New?” said Caroline.
“Wonky?” said Kay.
“Gibbous,” said Dee.
“Waxing gibbous,” said Sabrina with a nod. “And in conjunction with Mars, you’ll note. There are certain herbs that should be harvested only under a waxing gibbous moon.”
It was only when Jizzimus failed to deliver some obvious dirty remark about his ‘moon’ that Jenny realised he was nowhere in sight. For half a second she worried, before deciding to savour his absence.
Caroline, who was scribbling notes in a little pad, raised her pencil. “What difference could it possibly make?” she asked. “Isn’t a plant a plant whenever you pick it?”
Sabrina smiled as she shook her head. Nobody could express condescension like Caroline. “Ur, we are engaged in the esoteric craft of herbalism and potion-making. If you’re going to think a plant is just a plant then you might as well take up homeopathy and try to cure illnesses with bottled water containing the ‘memory of plants’.”
“Melissa Sacks, her mum got an infected ulcer on her foot and used homeopathic remedies to treat it,” said Dee.
“Did it work?” asked Jenny.
“Well, she says that they decided to amputate her foot before the remedies really got chance to work, so the jury’s out on that one.”
“Ur, shall we begin?” Sabrina led them toward the end of the gardens and the field beyond.
“Those shoes are going to get ruined,” said Kay, falling into step beside Jenny. She didn’t need to speak for Jenny to know she was there: Kay was a walking cloud of sweet and sour child funk.
“Just what I was thinking,” said Jenny.
Kay frowned. “I’m surprised you wanted to come along.”
“Why?” said Jenny.
“Just didn’t think it was your thing.”
“Oh? What is my thing?” Jenny plucked a weedy flower from the edge of the grass and peered at it. It probably wasn’t a herb.
Kay gave her a look. “I don’t think you have a thing.”
“Ouch.”
Kay slipped through a gap in the hedge ahead of Jenny. “Some people might think you’re only here to ‘protect’ me,” she said, drawing quote marks in the air.
“Is that so bad?”
“You’re not my mum, you know.”
The comment stung Jenny unexpectedly. She didn’t want to be a stand-in mum and yet, perversely, she felt aggrieved that Kay might reject her as such. “I feel a bit responsible for you.”
“Why?”
Up ahead, Sabrina’s headlamp and Dee’s torch swung around like drunken fireflies. Jenny’s foot sunk into something soft and squidgy. She didn’t look at what it was. “Well, I found you in that warehouse. I rescued you. That makes me responsible.”
“That’s stupid logic,” said Kay. “Dee rescued both of us when she agreed to bring us here. Is she responsible for both of us? No.”
“Have I done something to upset you?” asked Jenny.
“No. But you could trust me to go for a walk without having to hold my hand.”
Jenny shook her head and kept her mouth closed until she was sure of what she wanted to say. “Kay. Listen. I’m not trying to be your mum. But you’re a young person—”
“I’m an adult.”
Jenny laughed. The scent in her nostrils told a different story. “You still need someone to look out for you. Do you have a family somewhere?”
“Why are you asking me that?” Even in the dark, Kay’s sudden, defensive attitude was obvious. “Do you want to send me back?”
“What? No. I mean, not unless you want to go. Do you not want to…?” Her words died away as Kay stomped off ahead.
Jenny sighed irritably to herself. “Fucknuggets,” she whispered.
“You got nuggets?” slurred Jizzimus, stumbling through a hedge.
“Where have you been?” said Jenny.
Jizzimus mounted her leg then tried and failed to climb up. “I could really murder some nuggets, guv,” he said.
“I haven’t got any nuggets.”
Jizzimus gave up on his climbing
attempt and fell to the floor with a mutter of, “Nugget ’oarder.”
“Are you drunk?” said Jenny.
“As a skink,” he replied happily.
“Skunk.”
“Them too. It was great, boss. Someone left this big pile of fuzzy apple mush next to one of the sheds.”
“And you ate it?”
“Well, I ‘ad to!” he said with passion. “What if someone else et it first, eh? Eh?”
“Why would they want to?”
“Well. There wuz some rats, ’oo were eying it up.”
“Nice.” Jenny looked ahead. The torches were quite distant now and no one had come back for her. No one appeared to have noticed her absence. “Come on,” she told the imp. “Let’s get you back.”
She bent down and scooped the tiny drunkard up in her arms.
“Can we order chicken nuggets from room service?” asked Jizzimus.
“No.”
“Can we cook some ourselves?”
“No.”
“Could we steal a car and go get some drive-by takeaway?”
“It’s called drive-thru.”
“Not the way, I do it, boss,” yawned the little horror and rolled over to sleep in her arms.
Having to deal with a remorseful and vomitous drunk at three in the morning is guaranteed to disturb your sleep. This is doubly so when only you can see or hear them. This is triply so when the remorseful drunk is only twelve inches high and is both too small and too drunk to reach the toilet bowl.
Jenny wasn’t sure what time she finally got back to bed but, whatever, she slept late. When she awoke, the sun was already high and shining in through partly opened curtains. Kay was gone. Jenny sat up and felt a lump in the sheets. There was a pendant and a piece of paper on the foot of her bed. She picked them up.
The pendant was a pebble. In fact, it was the pebble she had seen Kay present as evidence of her work at lunch yesterday. It glowed with an orange light so feeble it was only visible when Jenny cupped her hands about it. A hole had been drilled through the top and a strip of leather threaded through.
The note simply read For you, with a wonky smiley face drawn next to the words.
Jenny uttered the kind of deeply sentimental “Aw” she’d never make if anyone else was present. The irritation and disappointment of the night before instantly melted away.
The reversal of mood was only partly undone by the discovery of Jizzimus in the shower, fast asleep and surrounded by the mess he had made in the night.
Dee had spent the morning facing continual frustration. It was made all the more annoying by Norma having predicted it. Her attempts to brew Vilhjálm’s Potion of Seeing as described in Svarta Norn had hit a barrier and that barrier was the identification of one key ingredient.
Dee asked Sabrina about it during the otherwise informative herb-walk but Sabrina shook her head and questioned both the spelling in the book and Dee’s pronunciation. In the morning, Dee had gone to Norma’s hut to see if the older witch could provide any clarification but, even as Dee raised her hand to knock, Norma called out, “I told you it can’t be done.”
Dee had turned away and now, in desperation, sought out the help of the other witches. Kay had smiled politely and shrugged. Caroline laughed at her for even thinking that she might have the vaguest idea. Shazam’s shed had been shrouded in plastic sheeting and, when Dee knocked, a very muffled voice had shouted something about a “critical stage in the process.” Driven more by a desire for completion than hopefulness, Dee knocked on Jenny’s work shed door.
“Coming,” called Jenny. She appeared around the side of the shed in a slow jog. “Overslept,” she explained.
“Sorry, poppet,” said Dee. “Didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“Nothing to disturb,” said Jenny.
“How’s the cloak of invisibility coming along?”
“It’s more a hanky of invisibility at the moment. How’s the potion-making?”
“I’m struggling with a herb.”
“Hard to find?”
“Hard to identify.” Dee opened the book. “It’s given here as rætadruncen.”
“What is that? Latin?”
“It’s an English translation of an Icelandic book, but I think this recipe could be written in medieval Gaelic or old English. I don’t know.”
She looked at Jenny. Jenny did a double take.
“You weren’t expecting me to offer any kind of wisdom, were you? I would have thought you’d be better off asking someone like—” She stopped herself. “You’ve asked everyone else already, haven’t you?”
Dee was sheepish. “Sorry, sweetness.”
Jenny shrugged gamely. “Well, I haven’t the foggiest. Rat. Rata. It sounds like your potion calls for a rat.”
Dee pulled a face and looked at the book again. “Shockingly, my dear, that’s not the worst suggestion I’ve had.”
“From the mouths of babes and fools.” Jenny opened the door to her work shed. “If it’s any help, someone told me there were rats sniffing around some spoiled fruit down by one of the other sheds.”
“Oh, thank you. Well, I’ll let you…” Dee tucked the book under her arm and set off.
“What’s it going to be anyway?” Jenny called after her.
“What?” said Dee.
“The potion.”
“Oh. A potion to make invisible spirits visible. Going to see if I can spot some wicked imps.”
Jenny’s mouth became an O of shock. Dee understood at once.
“Think it’ll let me see through your invisibility cloak?” She smiled. “Shouldn’t worry. It’s devilishly hard to make.” She went on her way.
Rats, she thought. It was, genuinely, the best option she’d so far been given. Rat was an ancient word. The Old English for rat was probably ræt or rattus or something like that. But did the recipe call for the hair of a rat? The toe? The heart? The entire tooting thing? If it did, that raised a new issue for Dee because she was a friend to animals, fair and foul. Rats were definitely on the cute end of the Dee Finch Huggability Scale.
“Nonetheless,” she said. With a mind-focusing blast of Disney song and a Tubular Bells hand wiggle, Dee cast a finding spell.
She walked along the line of sheds. There was an eldritch glimmer from near the wall of Shazam’s plastic-wrapped shed/biohazard laboratory.
There did indeed appear to be the smeary remains of fruit splashed against the shed wall and on the ground; apple by the smell of it. And it had certainly been popular. There were gnaw marks up the damp wall and even a hole bored some way in. And on the grass, as though auditioning for the role of dead rat cliché #2, was a dead rat: flat on its back, paws in the air, with its tiny tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth.
“Aw, poor thing,” said Dee, ignoring that pragmatic part of her brain which was cheering because her rat-killing dilemma had been swept away by good old natural causes.
Natural causes?
Dee whipped out a handkerchief and picked up the corpse. It was wet and stank, quite clearly, of apples and alcohol.
“Did you drink yourself to death, you silly sod?” she said.
The rat stayed silent on the matter.
Jenny was frantic.
“This is not good! Not good!”
Jizzimus, nursing a hangover, lay on the worktable of her shed and groaned. “Give it a rest, boss. There’s nuffin’ to worry about.”
“Nothing? Didn’t you hear her? She’s going to make a potion that will allow her to see invisible creatures. Like you! And then what?”
“Imp porn?” suggested the little fiend.
“No, you pillock. It means we’re rumbled and I’m out of here. Or worse.”
Jizzimus gave a tiny shrug. “You ’eard ’er though. She says it ain’ gunna work. She’s gunna fail.”
“Of course she’d say it’s not going to work!” Jenny shouted. “She’s British, for Christ’s sake! Have you learned nothing all the time you’ve spent in this bloody count
ry?”
The imp raised a finger. “Toad in the ’ole isn’t ’alf the fun it sounds.”
“Shut up! This is serious!”
There was a knock at the door. Kay poked her head round. “Hi,” she said. “I just wanted to … I heard…”
Jenny cast about, flustered.
“Eat ’er,” said Jizzimus. “Eat ’er now, while no one’s lookin’.”
“Sorry. I was just talking to myself,” said Jenny.
Kay’s smile was polite. “Quite loudly.”
“Sometimes I don’t listen to myself and I have to … you know.” Jenny shook herself. “Hey—” She took hold of the pebble pendant hanging from her neck. “This is lovely. Thank you.”
Kay shrugged. “You like it?”
“It’s really cool.”
“You’re not just saying that to be nice?”
“It’s a friggin’ stone,” muttered Jizzimus.
“No,” said Jenny. “Listen, about last night…”
Kay held up her hands. “I snapped. I do that. Um, my bad. I’m just not ready to—” She fumbled for words. “We’ve all got secrets and stuff. Give me time.”
Jenny nodded. “Sure.”
“I made us one each.” Kay held up a similar pebble, hanging from her neck. “I thought they might help you – us – stop worrying.”
Jenny gave her a questioning look.
“They glow when you’re in danger,” said Kay.
“Oh.” Jenny looked at hers. “It’s glowing right now.”
“Yeah, but not much. I mean there’s always some danger. Falling trees. Meteor strikes.”
Jizzimus sat up in fright. “Meteors? Meteors!”
“Aren’t you more likely to be killed by a donkey than a falling meteor?” said Jenny.
“Shit! There’s fallin’ donkeys now!” Jizzimus dived under the table. Kay glanced over as a plate rattled.
Jenny made a show of testing the floorboards. “I think we might have rats.”
