Backwards Moon (4 page)

“You weren't seen?” asked Scabiosa quickly.

“No,” said Rose. She sank to a seat, her face gray and drawn.

“Is the Wellspring water still good?” asked Violet.

“It was hard to tell in the glare,” said Rose, sighing.

“The Veilspinning, it's a nightspell, isn't it?” asked Scabiosa. “We'll have to wait until night to try.”

Rose nodded. “Midnight. Oh, my head hurts. I can't think straight . . .”

“It will be all right, Rose,” said Scabiosa, patting her shoulder with one big hand. “You shouldn't worry so. The Veilspinning will work, surely. It's time now to get some sleep.”

Everyone stood and bowed their heads, their pointed hats bobbing. “Merry meet, and merry part,” they murmured. It was what you always said at the close of a Gathering, merry or not. Then they all turned soberly toward their cottages.

On the edge of the Commons a branch snapped—a tiny sound, but Nettle turned her head. Something small and thin and low to the ground—a weasel? a marten?—seemed to slip into the underbrush and scurry away.

Nettle woke to the pleasant smells of meadow-mint tea and wood smoke. Outside the sleeping loft window, the sun was high over Gaia's Summit. For a moment Nettle couldn't think why she would still be abed at this hour. Then she remembered everything.

She looked over at Bracken's bed. It was empty. Nettle stood and slipped on her dress. She snatched her hat from the bedpost and crammed it on her head. Then she climbed swiftly down the ladder. Through the front window, she could see Bracken outside, huddled on the porch swing. Great-Aunt Iris lay fast asleep in her bed by the stove, her thin gray braid trailing on the floor. Nettle snuck past her, slipped through the door, and sat down beside Bracken on the swing. “It's like the whole world has changed. In one day. Because of two humans.”

Bracken nodded. “What
is
it about them, that thing that makes them so dangerous that nobody will tell us?”

“Sedge said we should be told. We could ask her.”

“She can't,” said Bracken. “They've all agreed.”

Part of being in a coven meant that when you agreed to something, you stuck to it. But Nettle and Bracken had both noticed that when it came to agreeing on things, some people's opinions seemed to count more than others', and that witchlings didn't get a say at all.

“Bother,” muttered Nettle.

“Toadflax wanted to tell us,” said Bracken.

“We could try asking her,” said Nettle.

“But how could we find her? It's no use going to her cottage.”

“True,” said Nettle soberly.

Toadflax's cottage was built on a ledge halfway up the cliffs, and whenever you flew near it, the cottage disappeared. Whether you could even see it from the valley floor depended on the time of day: where the sun was, and the light and shadows on the cliff face.

Once, long ago, Nettle had flown up and stared for a long time at the spot where the cottage was supposed to be. But there was something about the shadows, the chill air . . . Nettle hadn't wanted to land. She thought of that now, as the swing hung still. She didn't feel like swinging.

In the silence, a hermit thrush sang. The notes cascaded down in perfect harmony, a waterfall of sound. Great Aunt Iris's snoring stopped. A gentle bumping, then their aunt padded onto the porch and peered out over the railing. Sunlight filtered through tree leaves and made patches of gold on the forest floor.

“My, what a pretty day,” she said. “Are you off to the meadow again? Take some muffins. I made them yesterday, those ones with currants. The kind you both like.” Then she turned and frowned, as though she were trying to remember
something. “That business with the humans. Did we get it cleared up?”

“Not exactly. Not yet,” said Bracken.

Great-Aunt Iris sat down in her rocking chair. “The Veil,” she said, rocking back and forth. “It seemed to me they said there was something wrong with it. That can't be right, though. Can it?”

“They're fixing it tonight,” said Bracken. “At midnight.”

“Good,” said Great-Aunt Iris. She leaned back and pushed with her strong, bare toes. The familiar
clunk, clunk, clunk
of her rocker mixed with the usual birdsong, as though this were any ordinary day.

Nettle wanted to go through the pass again, that morning.

“Please,” she begged. “It will only be open for today. Just until they fix the Veil. Come on, Bracken. Please.”

“I thought you wanted to play Catapult,” said Bracken.

“I did, but that was before.”

But for once Bracken wouldn't budge. “I think we should stay in the valley. And don't sulk, or I won't play at all.”

So Catapult it was.

Nettle fetched some muffins and nuts and cheese and two bottles of blackberry juice and slipped them into her pocket. She had always taken her pocket for granted, but that morning it struck her how awful it would be if it didn't work—if you had to put everything you wanted to carry into a bundle and lug it around on your back. If your only pocket was a pathetic little thing like the ones humans had . . .

It was then that she remembered the black box.

“The box!” she said. “We forgot about the box!” She pulled it from her pocket and jabbed it. It made its tiny unpleasant
whine, but in the daylight its strange glow did not look so sinister.

“Remember how they said it was a map?” said Bracken suddenly. “The two humans, remember? They said it was a map.”

“We could use it to explore!” said Nettle.

“Maybe,” said Bracken, looking at it doubtfully.

“Let's take it out to the sitting rock,” said Nettle. “Come on.” She hurried down the porch steps.

The sitting rock was a little way into the forest in a sunny clearing where leathery ferns grew. Nettle sat down and jabbed the box again. It seemed to be growing a bit weary. . . . It took longer for the whine to start and the light to appear. Nettle jabbed it again.

“Don't just keep jabbing,” said Bracken. “Think first. There must be some sort of trick to it. . . . Here, let me have it.”

Nettle handed it to her.

They jabbed and stared, jabbed and stared. The light went on and off.

“This is making me dizzy,” said Nettle. She sighed and looked up from the box. Then she jumped, startled.

A creature peered out of the ferns, its pointed nose quivering. The air wavered, and Toadflax stood before them. “It's no use looking at their maps,” she said. “Your way is a witch's way.” Toadflax muttered something under her breath. The box sailed through the air and landed at her feet. Before Nettle or Bracken could move, it began to quiver. A series of small fires erupted from its glassy surface. A cloud of foul, acrid smoke drifted and twisted in the sunlit clearing.

Toadflax grinned sourly. “That takes care of
that
.”

“You might have asked!” said Nettle hotly.

Toadflax shrugged.

“What do you mean our way ‘is a witch's way'?” said Bracken.

“You'll find out soon enough,” said Toadflax. “At the Veilspinning.”

“What are you talking about?” snapped Bracken.

“ ‘Rose, you shouldn't
worry
so,' ” Toadflax mimicked in Scabiosa's deep voice. “ ‘The Veilspinning will work,
surely
.' ”

“How did you know she said that?” demanded Nettle. “You were listening in after you left!”

“Of course,” said Toadflax.

“You were that marten I saw.”

“True,” said Toadflax. “And don't you wish you could do a spell like that?”

And with that, the air wavered. A scrabbling, the swish of a long tail, and she was gone.

“She wrecked the box without even asking!” said Nettle. “And I
hate
the way she sneaks around like that, listening and spying.”

Bracken nodded. “The others never change form like that. She has way more magic than they do.”

“What did she mean, our way is a witch's way?”

Bracken raised her shoulders. “She said we'd find out. Then she made fun of Scabiosa for saying the Veilspinning will work.”

“Do you think the others will even let us
come
to the Veilspinning?”

“Probably not,” said Bracken.

“They can't keep treating us like little bitty witchlings our whole life. They can't,” said Nettle.

But it turned out they could: a Veilspinning was no place for witchlings, Rose said. Which meant they had to stay home.

It was almost midnight, and out their sleeping loft window, Nettle and Bracken could see dim gray shapes standing in a circle around where the Gathering fire would be if anyone had lit it.

Nettle counted off each pointed hat. “Six,” she said. “Seven, eight, nine. That means Toadflax is there. Do you think she's even helping?”

“You would think so,” said Bracken. “If only to keep the humans out for her own selfish self.”

They watched as each witch took a lantern from her pocket and lit it with a spark from her finger. The lights rose into the sky and hovered. Nettle could hear shrill voices as the group formed a wavering V. Like wild geese on the wing, they streamed toward the pass.

“Now?” asked Nettle, getting out her broomstick. Bracken nodded. They climbed to the window ledge, leaped onto their brooms, and sped after the lanterns.

“Keep back,” said Bracken. “Don't get too close.”

As they neared the pass, the witches scattered, their lanterns glimmering. Rose gave a sharp cry, and at that, the lanterns soared sidewise across the pass. Behind each lantern a thread of light spooled forth, glowing. Like spiders spinning, the witches glided back and forth and up and down. The strands wove together into a quivering web of light.

“The Veil,” breathed Bracken.

The witches were chanting now.

Rose flew above the web, scattering drops from the bottle of Wellspring water. A wind blew down the valley, stirring the threads. Then the chanting died away.

The threads began to dull and fray.

“Something's wrong,” muttered Bracken. “Something doesn't seem right. It doesn't feel right.”

Scraps of Veil drifted by, gray as cobwebs. Nettle looked to the pass. The sadness she'd noticed before, the hint of a tune not remembered, still seemed to hang there. A wailing, a high-pitched crying under the stars, began. At first Nettle thought it was the wind.

“They're
crying
,” said Bracken in a shocked voice. Nettle and Bracken hovered, horrified, as the others streamed past them, unseeing.

All but one.

“I thought you'd be here,” said Toadflax. She hovered near, holding her lantern high.

“It failed!” cried Bracken. “The magic failed.”

“I knew it would,” said Toadflax. She drew closer. “The Wellspring water was no good,” she hissed. “As any fool could have foreseen. The Wellsprings are ruined, ruined by humans with their stink and their noise and their trampling. It's no good hiding here in this poor doomed little valley. Now follow me.”