A Witch In Winter (5 page)

We all craned round to look at the page. Prue looked up, her broad face shining wickedly in the firelight.

‘Go on, let’s try it out! Listen.’ She began to read haltingly, stumbling over the crabbed letters and unfamiliar spelling: ‘To bind an object of desire, close as flesh to bone, as fish to sea, as flame to fire. When the moon waxeth, let the witch hold in her heart the beloved, even while she speak aloud the words of power.’

She held out the book and we bent our heads, silently reading through the short phrase. The strange words reminded me of doing
Beowulf
at school.
Tréowlufu
– I knew
lufu
was love, so perhaps
tréowlufu
was true love.
Ferhþ
I didn’t recognize – I thought perhaps it was either faith or forever or something of that kind.
Sáwol
I had a feeling was something like soul. I couldn’t suppress a shudder. What were we asking – or promising – with these words?

‘Come on, let’s do it!’ Prue urged. Her face was shiny and scarlet with wine. I wondered if she had someone particular in mind. ‘We’ll all do it together.’

‘Oooh … go on then!’ Liz took another slosh of whisky.

‘I’ll do it if it’ll make Philip ask me out!’ June giggled, and then gave an almighty burp.

‘Anna?’

I didn’t want to. I really, really didn’t want to. There was something sinister about the burnt-up book with its scratchy, spidery writing. I kept wondering who had last held it, and why they’d sealed it in the bread oven. Had they been trying to conceal it – or destroy it? Either way, someone had gone to a good deal of trouble to keep it away from prying eyes. And now we’d unburied it, opened its blackened pages, and read the words hidden and silent for so long. I had the strong feeling of meddling with something we shouldn’t.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. The fire flared up, casting tall wavering shadows on the walls and ceiling, and the flames reflected back at me from the window panes and the polished surface of the furniture, until it seemed as if Wicker House itself were burning.

‘Oh come
oooooooooon
,’ begged June in an exaggerated tone of pleading. ‘I thought you said you weren’t superstitious?’

I had said that. And it did seem stupid to be afraid of a few words on a bit of charred paper. It wasn’t like I was being asked to drink eye of newt. I looked around the ring of faces, their glittering eyes all urging me on, and that strange, tense feeling welled up inside me again. It felt like some creature inside me trying to get out, trying to escape.

‘Scared?’ Prue said, and her voice was taunting. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t want to be the prissy cry-baby from London either. The trapped thing rose inside me, suffocating me. There was no way out.

‘Oh … OK,’ I said. My voice sounded strange and hard in my ears and my face was hot.

‘Hooray!’ said June. ‘I think we should join hands; circle of power and all that, you know.’ We knelt on the hearth and joined hands in the flickering light of the fire. I was opposite Prue, her hair sticking up and tousled around her face. In the dim, shifting light she looked positively witchy, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear a crack of thunder or the screech of an owl break across the quiet night.

‘OK, can everyone see the page?’ June asked. Everyone nodded.

‘We’re to hold in our minds the image of our beloved and say the incantation. Ready?’

I wasn’t intending to think of anyone in particular. But as the strange, rolling words bubbled from my mouth an image came into my mind involuntarily. It was the face of Seth Waters.

After we all finished speaking there was a deep silence, broken only by the moan of the wind outside the window and the shift and crack of the logs in the grate. We loosed our sticky hands, and June bent and picked up the book.

‘Well, that’s that,’ she said, and shut it with a clap. Something shaped like a leaf fluttered out and we all bent down simultaneously to pick it up.

It wasn’t a leaf. It was a hand – the skin of the palm and fingers, dried and pressed flat between the pages of the book like a cruel, misshapen flower.

‘Oh yuck, yuck!’ shrieked June and kicked it violently towards the fire in a sickened panic. She caught a log with the toe of her boot and the whole mass shifted and crashed into the centre of the grate with a shower of sparks that flew out into the room. We beat them out with our hands and feet – and when the flames subsided the thing, whatever it was, had gone.

There was silence for a second then Prue vomited loudly into the coal scuttle, and the lights came on with a shocking suddenness.

I felt very glad not to be sleeping alone that night. The house creaked and groaned as if there was a strong wind outside, though the night was still. I listened to the slow rhythm of Prue’s snores and tried not to hear the shrieks from the wood, or the rattling scratch of the things that stalked the attic.

Instead I lay in the darkness and tried to think of ‘lovely things’, just as Dad had told me when I was small and had a nightmare. I thought of Dad, Suzie, Lauren. I thought of seeing all my friends, having them to visit. Summer in the big garden … swimming in the sea …

My breathing slowed. I was almost asleep when my ear caught another sound, something fluttering against the window pane. The noise was stealthy, soft, persistent. I shut my eyes tighter and pulled the sheets to my chin, pushing away the vision of a dry, dead hand, pressed paper-thin, scrabbling against the window, trying to get in.

CHAPTER FOUR

O
n Monday morning I ran into Liz and Prue in the car park at school. They both looked a bit shamefaced. Prue was blushing.

‘Sorry about being sick, Anna. I totally meant to clean it up but…’

‘It’s fine, honestly. I wasn’t in such a bad shape as the rest of you, I think. Anyway I can’t imagine mucking out the stable with a hangover was much more fun.’

‘It wasn’t,’ Prue grimaced. ‘Well, soz and all that. Oh – and surprise surprise, we saw Philip Granger on the way back from the stables and he ignored June as per usual. No short cuts in love, I guess. Oh look, there she is. Hi, June!’

June was sprinting across the car park. Her face was scarlet with exertion and she was wearing a very odd expression; a mixture of alarm and gleeful excitement.

‘Hey girls,’ she gasped. ‘Anna – I came to warn you, get your flak jacket on.’

‘What?’ I said, puzzled.

June’s chest was still heaving, but she managed, ‘According to the grapevine—’

She broke off, her eyes fixed on something over my shoulder.

‘Too late.’

Caroline was marching across the car park towards us. Her face was so bitter that I looked behind me involuntarily to see if someone else could be the object of her fury, but there was no one there. There was however a large crowd in front and more people were gathering every second. There was an electric buzz in the air.

When she reached us Caroline stopped. Her blue eyes were ice cold, and she leaned very close to me so that I could feel flecks of spit as she hissed into my face.

‘Listen, you boyfriend-stealing bitch, I bet you’re pleased with yourself at the moment, but I’m going to make sure that you don’t have a single friend left in Winter by the end of today. Oh—’ she paused in mock confusion and put a finger to her lips, ‘I forgot. You didn’t have any worth having to begin with. If you think some ugly skank can just swan down from London and start stealing the boyfriends of people who’ve lived here all their lives, you’ve got another think coming. We’d been going out for over a
year
, for God’s sake.’

I saw with astonishment that there were tears in her eyes. One of her friends stepped forwards and said timidly, ‘Caroline, just leave it.’

‘Shut up!’ Caroline shouted. Then she turned back to me. ‘You are going to regret this for the rest of your life, bitch. In the meantime, here’s something to be going on with.’

She drew her hand back and slapped me hard in the face.

It hurt. A lot. I staggered with the force of the blow, my ears hummed and I saw stars – just like in the movies. As the dizziness subsided I could feel my face begin to flame with a stinging pain. Then she spat at my feet and turned to stalk away.

‘Stop it, Caroline!’ someone shouted, and I looked to see Seth striding across the quad. His face was livid and for the first time I could see where some of his reputation came from – I’d had trouble believing the gossip June had passed on, but now, seeing his face dark with fury, the muscles in his shoulders taut and hard, I could imagine him hitting someone. Maybe even hitting them hard enough to cause considerable damage.

‘Stop it.’ His voice was quiet, but deadly angry. ‘I told you, it’s not her fault.’

‘Of course it’s her fault,’ Caroline spat. ‘We were completely happy until
she
turned up. She’s a total witch and I hate her.’ She tried again to leave and Seth gripped her shoulder so hard I felt sympathetic, even in spite of the burning pain in my cheek.

‘For God’s sake,’ Seth hissed through his teeth, ‘just shut up, you’re only embarrassing yourself. I suggest you apologize
now
for hitting her or
you’re
going to be the one regretting this.’

‘Get off me, Seth, you’re hurting me!’ She winced away from his grip on her shoulder and he released his hand, but shook his head.

‘You hurt Anna first.’

‘Good.’

She pushed past him without another word and was gone.

Seth turned to me and took my face tenderly in both his hands, turning my flaming cheek to the light.

‘Oh, Anna, I’m so sorry.’ He touched the swelling bruise gently. I winced, and his face reflected my pain like a mirror. ‘I should have warned you. I knew she was on the war-path but I never guessed she’d stoop to this … Oh Christ.’ He touched my lip. ‘It’s bleeding.’

‘What’s going on?’ I said thickly. It was hard to speak and the side of my mouth felt swollen. Seth looked strange – there were dark circles under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept, and his clothes were even scruffier and more dishevelled than usual. ‘Are you OK?’ I asked, through the blood, but he ignored my question.

‘We’d better get you to the nurse’s office.’

He put an arm around my shoulder, leading me across the car park, through the throng of whispering, gawping spectators, who parted like the Red Sea to let us through. Their faces were alive with shock and, in more than a few cases, envy. I guessed many of them would have swapped with me, burning face and all, in order to be beside Seth’s side. I’d rather have been almost anywhere else.

‘What on earth!’ exclaimed Mrs Carlisle as she unlocked the first aid cupboard. ‘Who did this?’

Seth opened his mouth to speak, but I got there first.

‘No one, I walked into a lamp-post.’

Mrs Carlisle turned back and raised one eyebrow sarcastically. ‘Really.’

‘Yes.’ Except it came out more like ‘yesh’.

‘A hand-shaped lamp-post?’

I shrugged and she rolled her eyes.

‘Well, I can’t make you tell me, but there’s a stringent anti-bullying policy at this school and if I see you in this office again I’m going to be asking some questions – and I won’t be asking
you
, Missy.’

I shrugged again, and then winced as she dabbed some TCP on to my split lip. Seth stood next to me holding my hand with his head bowed. He looked the picture of guilt and I got the impression that Mrs Carlisle thought he was probably responsible. It would have helped if I had the first idea what was going on, but I had no intention of dobbing on Caroline. There was obviously some major misunderstanding and I didn’t really want to turn scab in my second week at Winter High.

When Mrs Carlisle had finished dressing the cut she gave me an icepack to hold to my cheek and said, ‘I’m taking you to your first period, Anna. What is it?’

‘Classhics,’ I slurred.

‘Right. Seth, where are you supposed to be?’

‘Chemistry, but Mrs Carlisle, could I please walk Anna—’

‘
No
,’ said Mrs Carlisle so forcefully even Seth’s obvious determination quailed a little. ‘I want a word with Anna. Alone.’

As we walked across the quad she tried to get more information out of me by casual chit-chat, plainly not satisfied with the story she had so far. But I wasn’t talking – for one thing it hurt too much – and my short yes-or-no answers weren’t getting her anywhere. Eventually she had to leave it with my story of a lamp-post and a flat-out assertion that Seth was not involved in anCP volved y way. She dropped me at the door of my Classics class, where June and Liz were goggling at me from their table, waiting for the story.

There was an audible hum as I slid into my place, and my cheeks began to burn again, not just with the sting of Caroline’s slap. All heads turned to look at me until Mrs Finch barked, ‘Back to the board, please.’