The Watching Wood (5 page)

‘I like this.’

Delilah stared at her reflection, her head tilted so her wavy, black hair shadowed her face. Rachel glanced again at the sad pile of clothes. She wondered if Mrs Quinlan had ever taken Delilah shopping, now that the small girl lived with her. And before that, had her mother, Ms Gold, ever bothered?

Ms Meredith Gold had outwardly been the most beautiful person Rachel had ever seen. But underneath her honey-coloured locks and luminous skin beat a heart as black as coal. The girls had never asked Delilah what life had been like with her mother, and Rachel wouldn’t ask now.

‘You know, if you’re not sure what suits you, I can help you with that.’

With sudden inspiration, Rachel began snatching tops and jeans, throwing them in Delilah’s direction.

‘You want to go for high-waisted jeans and trousers,’ she said in a flurry of hangers and protective plastic, ‘so you’re not cut in half. That’ll make you look taller. And v-necks are great for petite shapes. And monochrome, no mad patterns or too many colours on your frame. You want to keep it simple. And
shoes
.’

She ran off to the shoe section, shouting as she ran her finger along the rows of perfectly placed pairs, finding soft leather sling-backs that she had to stop herself adding to her own collection.

‘Can you wear heels? Are you allowed? It’s the one thing my mum won’t budge on. I can get away with two inches on special occasions and, I mean, I have hidden a pair in my bag sometimes so I can change when I’m out. But my mum’s convinced that heels are the devil.’ She jogged back and knelt in front of Delilah, holding out a sparkly sandal like Prince Charming for Cinderella. ‘I’m not allowed to wear them until my feet stop growing. She says I could get bunions, or in-growing toenails, but I don’t know. I think that might be a load of rubbish.’

She didn’t notice anything was wrong until Delilah suddenly backed away.

‘No. I like this.’

‘But … don’t you want–’

‘I like this.’

Rachel realised she’d pushed too hard. The withdrawn
expression on Delilah’s face was the same as when Meredith was still around, before she’d been thrown down the demon well and Delilah taken into the care of Mrs Quinlan. But she had begun to change in the last few months, from a quiet thing that barely spoke to a bright young girl with strong opinions and obvious talent. With Adie, it seemed, she had formed a special bond, and her gift for magic flourished when they worked together.

But it was a fragile new beginning and, all too often, something would shut down inside and Delilah would become the compliant, quiet girl from before. Rachel looked up into the big, brown eyes and knew the shell had closed around her friend once again.

‘Okay,’ she said, placing the pile of lonely, grey clothes in Delilah’s arms. ‘We’ll take these then.’

5

In a Cold, Dark Corner

Grace’s fingers traced the gold letters stamped on the cloth-bound spines.
Practical Applications of the Four Leaf Clover; Merrows and the Curse of the Mermaid’s Call; The Leanan-Sidhe and other Vampires
.

She would never say it to the girls, because she would sound even nerdier than usual, but she loved the smell of books. There was something old and earthy in the scent of a library and in this one, where every book seemed at least a hundred years old, it was like exploring deep inside the folds of the Earth.

At first the library hadn’t seemed any more magical than her local library at home but, as she moved from one section to the next, opening and scanning dozens of books, she felt the atmosphere, and her mood, change. Faery lore, under
various names, seemed to dominate in most subjects. Most mythical creatures in this world were actually faeries of different forms, and scaring them off, blocking their attacks or getting rid of them in general was the most covered topic.

She replaced a red-covered edition of
The Gwyllion Stare: The Unknown Truth
, and turned a corner into an aisle that seemed full of sunlight. She felt instantly warmer, happier and surrounded by nature, like the shelves were trees in full blossom, and the carpet beneath her feet was soft, green grass. The books around her looked fresh and new, regardless of age, and were all about flora and fauna, and the importance of the Wiccan’s relationship with nature. She turned another corner, and was hit with a blast of cold wind. The briny scent of seaweed permeated the air, and an impossible gale whistled through the stacks. Here, the shelves were full of stories about the sea, witches controlling water, and hideous creatures that dragged ships to their doom at the bottom of the ocean.

Time flew by as Grace strolled in and out of different sections, her moods swinging as she felt gleeful one minute, pensive the next, drifting through this ultimate of libraries. But as she neared the back of the room, something cold crept over her. It wasn’t just the temperature dropping, but the sensation of icy fingers inching their way up her back. The light dimmed until she had trouble seeing in front of her, and her shoes squelched in the carpet that appeared to be rotting
beneath her feet. In the gloom she could see the speckled black of mould reaching up the walls, and the maggot-ridden shelves held books that were warped and disintegrating with damp. She scanned the grimy-looking titles:
Wickedness and the Human Fallacy; From Afar: A Study in Human Weakness; Homo Sapiens: The Wiccan Neanderthal
.

She felt like she was shrinking, like her body was actually getting smaller and smaller under the threatening, close air that stank of rot and hate. She leaned hard on the shelves for support, ignoring the squishing maggots beneath her fingertips, and longed for home; one tiny glimpse of something familiar that would alleviate this horrible darkness.

Crrrreakk
.

The shelf bent under her hand and suddenly snapped in two, spilling its contents onto the squelchy carpet. A green-covered book, entitled
Between the Wiccan and the Human World
, landed right at her feet. Grace dropped to her knees, and flipped it open. The book was full of spidery text and intricate maps. She flipped back and read down the contents until she got to number eleven,
Crossing the Water: The Ferryman
. She rifled through to the right page and started reading.

‘Rachel said that we’re on this island, Hy-Breasal, right? Well then, it’s this Ferryman that can travel between the two worlds, this and ours.’ Back in the Venetian Room, Grace
pointed to the text that described the Ferryman and how to find him. ‘This, people, is how we get home!’

‘It says here we’ve to pay him,’ Jenny said. ‘How much does it cost? And do you think he’s going to take
euros
?’

‘I’ve seven euros and thirty cents,’ Una said, digging through her pockets and finding another coin. ‘Thiry-
five
cents.’

‘I don’t think he’ll take euros, Una,’ Grace said, carefully turning the decaying pages.

‘Looks to me like this is one of those
It’ll cost you your soul
kind of deals.’ Jenny was tucking her newly acquired wardrobe into the one of the stone alcoves. ‘We’re not signing a blank cheque to get on some dodgy ferry.’

‘But this could be our way home.’

‘Or our way into a dungeon with some supernatural creep. Not a chance, Grace. We’ll have to find another way.’

‘What if there
is
no other way?’

‘Of course there’ll be another way. There’ll be a spell we can do, or some transporting potion, something we can do ourselves without trusting some ancient weirdo we’ve never met. I’m not taking that chance.’

‘It’s not only up to you!’

‘Fine, then we’ll take a vote.’

Grace looked around the room and knew there was no point. No-one liked the idea. Adie was avoiding her gaze, like she did whenever she didn’t want to disagree out
loud; Rachel didn’t seem in any mad rush to leave as she sorted through her alcove full of new clothes; and Delilah was hiding behind her hair, the way she did whenever she became withdrawn and frightened. She’d go with whoever talked the loudest. And Jenny could talk loud.

‘It’s cold here, and I can’t sleep, and everything’s scary,’ Una said firmly. ‘I want to get a lift with this Ferryman.’

Grace dropped the book to the floor and climbed into her half-hammock in the canal.

‘Doesn’t matter, Una. No-one else does.’

Unable to sleep, Grace tapped her fingernails on the black slate that Aura had given her. A
home
slate, she had called it, a way to see your friends and family when you were homesick. But Grace didn’t know how to make it work. She lay in her half-hammock, curled around the shard of black stone, listening to the almost-snores of Adie and the definite-snores of Jenny. She missed her own bed, and her mum’s cooking, and her own clothes. She even missed getting up for school in the morning. But most of all she missed her mum. There was only the two of them, and it grieved Grace to think of what her mum must be going through.

Would time pass at the same rate here? Would everyone at home know they were missing? Were Ms Lemon and Mrs Quinlan worried sick, and trying to reach them? She curled
tighter into the sackcloth that bobbed on the water, and a single tear rolled down her cheek and dropped onto the slate.

Out of the blackness appeared a flurry of light.

Grace sat bolt upright as an image focused on the stone like a flatscreen tv. Her mother sat at their kitchen table, opposite a Garda scribbling on a little notepad. There was no sound, but Patricia Brennan was talking a mile a minute between hiccuping sobs, clutching a tattered tissue in one hand. Her eyes were swollen. She had obviously been crying for hours. The Garda was nodding sympathetically, patting her mother’s hand but, though her mother kept on talking, he had stopped writing. Eventually, Mrs Brennan’s sobs took over and she covered her face with her hands.

Grace watched for as long as she could bear it then, with tears streaming down her own face, she covered the image with her palm. The light faded and the slate turned black. She buried her sobs in the crook of her elbow, trying not to wake the others. But sniffling above her told her someone was already awake.

‘Una?’

Grace looked over the ledge at the silhouette lying in a cold alcove. There was a faint light that quickly faded, and the clatter of slate on stone.

‘Una, are you okay?’

There was no answer, but the sniffling stopped abruptly. Grace could make out the shape of shuddering shoulders in
the dark, and her heart ached even more.

‘I’ll get us home, Una. Soon. I promise.’

In the silence of the night, Grace decided what had to be done. And with the comfort of certainty, she finally fell asleep.

‘Glamour,’ Madame Three barked from the centre of the arena, ‘is the blade of the Wiccan sword. A terrible beauty, a cruel allure, and the flame in the torch of every Hunter… Time and beauty … Beauty and time … You see?’

She trailed off, seeming to lose her train of thought, and paced in a tight circle. Grace could get a closer look at the woman from the front row this time. The bleachers had moved from outside the barriers of the arena, to the inside, and Madame Three was only a few metres away. The swathes of velvet that cloaked her stout body dragged over the dry muck of the arena, and her blonde hair clung to her head in tight curls. Her skin was smooth and plump, but there was something not quite right about her face. It was as if the muscles beneath were desperate to sag, but were held reluctantly aloft with invisible scaffolding. Grace felt weary as she watched the woman pace around the table that stood in the centre of the bleachers, and wished that one of the other Supremes would intercede to move things along. But Lord Machlau’s gaze was firmly aimed at the ground, and Lady
Hecate’s thin lips were pursed with severity.

‘Glamour!’ Madame Three suddenly exclaimed, pointing at a birdcage on the table, which held a tiny creature. ‘Win the wood nymph’s trust, and he shall take your hand. And your glory shall grow.’

She indicated the Trial-board that hung in the air above them, as Lady Hecate finally stepped forward.

‘Competitors must use their glamour skills to entice the wood nymph from the cage, and remember, not every faery is as enticing as the next. Choose your breed well.’

A boy from Raven Hall was first to compete. He swept his long-fingered hands over his face, and his glamour spell revealed a shrivelled frame, with a blunt face and pointed ears. He had so little flesh that his ribs protruded over his concave stomach. He opened the door of the birdcage and poked his bony fingers through, wriggling them like worms on a hook. But the nymph remained pressed against the bars opposite, and refused to move.

After several minutes Lady Hecate shrieked ‘A highland brownie. Fail!’

The next competitors stepped up and tried their glamour spells on the wood nymph.

‘A fir darrig. Fail!’

‘A bogle. Fail!’

There were varying degrees of failure. Sometimes the nymph would trot around the waiting fingers, even nipping
at those that poked too hard, and other times he remained at the back of the cage and watched with suspicion.

At last a slender girl from Hawk Falls approached the cage. Her faery mimicked her own figure, long and graceful, with delicate wings that stretched from far above her head to the ground, glinting like frosted glass. Long tresses of golden hair cloaked her like a cape and, instead of jabbing her fingers into the cage, she knelt down and whispered inaudibly. After a short while the wood nymph crept forward, eventually leaving the safety of the cage. The girl snatched the tiny creature and held him, squealing, in the air, as her glamour faded. The Hawk Falls team leapt to their feet in triumph, and Grace caught the self-satisfied smirk of captain Victoria Meister.

‘Success for Hawk Falls!’ called Lady Hecate and then, with a grimace, ‘and now for our final team. St John’s of Dunbridge, please choose your competitor.’

‘That’s a no-brainer,’ said Una, giving Rachel a slap on the back.

‘Maybe try and copy the Hawk Falls girl,’ Grace said, before catching herself. ‘But you know it doesn’t matter. We’re not here to win.’

‘Right,’ said Rachel, winking at Jenny as she made her way to the table.

Grace couldn’t help it, her heart was fluttering in her chest. She held her breath as Rachel stood, for what seemed
like forever, in front of the table, breathing slowly and preparing herself. Finally, as some tutting and moaning echoed around the arena, she finally lifted her hands to her face, and
disappeared
.

‘Holy fudgeballs!’ Una shrieked. ‘She’s
gone
!’

‘Where?’ Adie said. ‘Where did she go? Oh God!’

Grace felt panic rise in her throat like bile, until she saw the tiny figure on the table open the door of the cage from the outside.

Rachel tried to block out the stares of the entire arena. She could feel them watching her back, just like she could feel the gaze of a tall man who stood at the entrance of the stadium, hidden between the bleachers. She had noticed him about halfway through the Trial, and couldn’t keep her eyes off him. His skin was so dark it had a hint of blue, but his eyes were pale, like tiny moons. His shaved head made his features look even more chiselled, and his clothes … his
clothes
. He was dressed like a privateer – one of those action heroes from olden times, who fought battles on the high seas – in a form-fitting leather jerkin, topped with a ruffled collar, right under his chin. His breeches and boots matched, and a sword and jewelled scabbard hung from his waist.

He was focussed entirely on the competitors, and appeared to ignore everything else that was going on in the arena. As
Rachel had taken her place at the table, she knew his focus would now be on her. But she tried to block it out, that and all the other distractions that came from the waiting crowd. She had never before attempted what she was about to do. She had reduced her size in glamour once or twice in the past, but not by much. It would take every ounce of concentration she had. Feeling the buzz in her fingertips, she built it up slowly, letting it grow until it was so fierce it reverberated through every cell of her body. Finally, when she couldn’t hold on to it anymore, she rippled her fingers over her face and the world dropped away.