Spellbinder (28 page)

“I don’t like this,” said Steve.

“It wasn’t like this before,” said Elsie, her voice hushed as if someone might overhear. “The bus stop was just over there and it was all green fields and wildflowers.”

Belladonna knew that they were all feeling the same oppression. She thought about going back, but when she turned to look back toward the town, she discovered that she couldn’t see it at all, just miles of wall receding to a pinprick.

Elsie was squinting into the distance ahead. “You know,” she said, “I think the walls stop up ahead. I can see sunlight.”

She was right. The walls blocked out most of the early-morning light, but up ahead they could clearly make out a strip of sunshine lying across the path. They sped up, eager for some relief, and as they did so, the crumbling tarmac of the narrow road gave way altogether and they found themselves walking on a
sandy country lane. Then the walls ended, but instead of the feeling of release they had expected, they found themselves hemmed in by towering hedgerows that were almost as high as the wall. The sunlight, it turned out, was the result of a few holes in an otherwise solid parapet of thorn and bramble. They stared at it in disbelief.

“Well,” said Elsie finally, “at least there’s one good thing.”

“Which is?” asked Steve.

“It isn’t dead,” said Elsie, “so whatever is infecting the town hasn’t got this far.”

That was true, and did give Belladonna some hope about their destination. Perhaps the decay hadn’t reached the House of Mists and the Conclave of Shadow was still there. She tried to feel optimistic, but somehow she kept returning to the thought that the reason these hedgerows weren’t dead was because it was convenient to someone to keep them alive . . . and to keep travelers on the approved path.

“D’you remember that trip to the farm last year?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said Steve, “it was miserable. And cold. And the smell!”

“This is kind of reminding me of that.”

“How so?”

Belladonna looked back at the way they’d come, and forward down the narrow lane.

“The sheep,” she said.

Steve looked at her, nonplussed, then a light suddenly dawned.

“Yes!” he said. “The way they herded them through the gate and into that narrow channel before they sheared them.”

Belladonna nodded. Steve looked back and ahead, grimly aware that such methods weren’t only used for things as benign as shearing.

“Shall we see if we can get through this hedgerow?” he said.

“I think that would be a really good idea.”

They ran to the hedgerows on either side of the road and searched for anything that looked like a thinning of the branches, but the hedge might as well have been made of concrete. Some light filtered through from the other side, but the gaps were too small to even give them a glimpse of what lay beyond the narrow lane.

“Ow!” said Steve, after reaching in too far. “These things are sharp . . . whoa!”

“What?”

Belladonna and Elsie stopped what they were doing and turned to look at Steve, who was standing in front of the hedge with a strange expression on his face.

“Come here,” he said quietly. “Watch this.”

There was something in his voice that sent a chill through Belladonna. She and Elsie walked over to him, half expecting to see some particularly nasty insect.

“Watch,” he said again.

He reached his hand into the hedge and deliberately scraped it against a thorn. Belladonna flinched as the blood trickled from his wrist onto the green hedge, but she was completely unprepared for what happened next.

As they watched, the branch where the blood had fallen began to absorb it. And as if that weren’t creepy enough, the surrounding branches pressed toward the site of the blood, eagerly straining for a share of the bounty.

Belladonna’s eyes opened wide. She’d seen plants that ate insects before; she’d even had a small Venus flytrap in her bedroom for a while. But plants that devoured human blood were something else altogether. She looked up and down the lane at the thick bramble hedge and wondered how much blood it had taken to grow so huge.

“That could work!” said Elsie suddenly.

Steve and Belladonna stared at her blankly.

“Didn’t you see?” asked Elsie. “When the other tendrils were trying to get the blood, they made a thin patch. Right there. We could get through!”

“Elsie,” said Belladonna, “that would take a lot of blood, and we sort of need ours.”

“But it
would
work,” insisted Elsie.

Belladonna rolled her eyes in frustration. Elsie’s unbounded enthusiasm about everything was starting to grate and she had begun to wonder if she really did
die in an accident or if perhaps her friends had helped her along the way. Strangely, Steve, who usually found everything that Elsie said irritating beyond words, was prowling in front of the hedge, as if looking for a slightly thinner spot.

“Steve,” said Belladonna, suddenly concerned, “you can’t be thinking . . .”

“We wouldn’t need much,” said Steve, “just a few good splashes.”

“Well, where would . . . you’re not going to cut yourself on purpose? What if it got infected? You could get tetanus!”

Steve shook his head, sat down on the dusty road, and rolled up his right jeans leg. Elsie and Belladonna walked over and looked down.

“Perfect!” announced Elsie. “That thing should bleed like a stuck pig!”

“You’re kidding, right?” said Belladonna, knowing that he wasn’t.

Steve grinned. The scab really was impressive. There was a good-sized central wound and several satellite scrapes that combined to create a mini planetary system on his knee.

“I fell off my bike two weeks ago,” he explained. “My Mum was always on at me to stop messing with the scab, but if I had, it would’ve been better by now.”

“How fast were you going?” asked Elsie, eager for all the gory details.

“Dunno,” said Steve, starting to pick at it in an exploratory fashion, “but I hit Foster’s grocery van and made a really good dent, so pretty fast, I think.”

Belladonna couldn’t bear to watch, but didn’t want to seem girly about the whole thing.

“So,” she said, marching toward the hedgerow, “what’s the plan?”

“Well,” said Elsie, joining her and examining the hedge critically, “if he stood here and hit the hedge there, then the branches would zoom in from either side and you and I could get through the thin spots.”

“Okay,” said Belladonna, nodding, “that could work. But . . .”

“But what?” asked Steve.

“Well, how are you going to get through?”

“I’ll just have to be quick,” grinned Steve. “Oh, hang on . . . we’ve got a gusher!”

The scab was off and blood was pouring down his knee. Steve stood up and half hopped to the hedge while trying to catch as much of the blood as he could. Belladonna and Elsie stood on either side and waited.

“Ready?”

“Of course we’re ready!” said Elsie impatiently. “Go! Go!”

Steve flicked the blood at the hedge. For a moment it just sat there, dripping slowly down the thorns, then there was a rustling and a sort of high-pitched, barely there whine, and the branches on either side shot toward the site of the feast. Belladonna shuddered, but
there wasn’t much time to think about it as the hedgerow in front of her suddenly thinned and she could make out a piece of field and daylight through the knotted bramble.

Elsie went first, charging toward the hedge with her head down and ribbons flying. With a yell loud enough to raise the Dead, if there had been any except herself around, she launched through the gap. Belladonna watched, then took a deep breath and ran forward, getting up as much speed as possible before covering her head with her hands and diving in.

She landed with a thump next to Elsie, who was flushed with the thrill of it all.

“That was great!” said Elsie, adjusting her ribbon.

Belladonna smiled thinly and noticed that a nasty gash on Elsie’s forearm was rapidly healing itself. In a moment she looked the perfect Edwardian girl again. Belladonna sighed. There were definitely some advantages to being dead. She had scratches right down both arms and the beginning of a bruise on her left knee and she knew they wouldn’t be vanishing anytime soon.

“Are you okay?” yelled Steve from the other side.

“Yes,” said Belladonna, “we’re fine!”

She tried to peer back through the hedgerow, but the brambles had all returned to their usual positions and there was no sign of Steve or the path.

“Oh, come on,” she heard him mutter, “bleed.
Bleed
.”

“Are you—?” began Elsie, but at that moment
there was a yell of triumph, a sort of splatting sound, and the whine and rustle of the thorn tendrils as they rushed toward the blood. Then there was an almighty crash as Steve rocketed out of the hedge and onto the ground next to them.

“Brilliant!” he said gleefully. “Did you hear that noise it made?”

“Yes,” said Belladonna grimly as the branches returned to their original positions once again.

She stood up and looked around. As she had expected, the hedgerow was the only green thing around. The grass where they had landed was brown and dead and the few bushes that crouched in sad clumps across the hill were gray and decayed.

“Ew,” said Steve, standing up and looking around, “what’s that smell?”

“I think it’s the plants,” said Belladonna, “dying.”

They tried holding their noses, but the putrid, composty smell just found its way in through their mouths instead.

“It’s this way . . . I think,” said Elsie.

“You think?” said Belladonna. “You mean you’re not sure?”

“Well, not exactly. I mean, I usually take the bus.”

“Why don’t you just disappear and reappear where you want to be?”

“That only works in the Land of the Living. It’s more ordinary here.”

“Ordinary,” said Steve. “Just the word I’d use for
a place with alchemists, huge hounds, flying huntsmen, and blood-eating shrubbery.”

“The bus goes on the road,” continued Elsie, ignoring him, “but some people like to walk and make a sort of camping trip out of it. I’ve heard them talk about crossing a plain. They said it was really pretty. The House is in the middle of a small wood and it has a garden. That’s where they have the garden parties.”

Belladonna and Steve looked at each other. They had no choice—they’d have to follow Elsie.

“Okay,” said Belladonna finally, “lead the way.”

Elsie smiled and marched off in what they all hoped was the right direction. Belladonna and Steve followed, but as they walked, Belladonna let the black curtain of her hair slip down to conceal her face. Something was wrong about this. She knew it, deep in her bones. If the House of Mists was so important, if it held the Dream Door and the Conclave of Shadow met there, then surely anyone with evil intentions would know that too. But on the other hand, her grandfather had seemed so sure. And after all, what else were they going to do?

“I wonder what happened to Ashe,” said Steve, to no one in particular.

“Maybe they got him,” said Elsie cheerfully. “Maybe those dogs ripped him to pieces!”

“They probably just scared him away,” said Belladonna gloomily. “He’ll turn up again.”

Elsie glanced at Belladonna, taken aback by the pessimism, but she couldn’t see her face for the hair.

“She’s always like that,” explained Steve drily. “Belladonna’s known for her relentless cheerfulness all over school. Gets us all down, actually, the way she constantly looks on the bright side.”

Elsie looked at Steve, who tried to maintain a straight face, but couldn’t stop the smile that tilted one side of his mouth. They both grinned and started to do imitations of Belladonna’s walk, stomping along behind her with their chins down.

They were still stomping and whispering when the target of their teasing tripped over and tumbled down a stinking, slimy bank of what had recently been daffodils.

“Ew!” said Elsie. “That looks disgusting!”

“You’re lucky,” said Steve. “You can’t smell it. You okay, Belladonna?”

Belladonna looked back up and was about to say that she was fine, when the words froze on her lips. Steve’s smile vanished too.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“Behind you,” said Belladonna.

Steve and Elsie turned around slowly. A few meters away, near the top of a small rise, Ashe’s Hound was watching them.

“Oh, no,” Steve whispered.

Belladonna scrambled to her feet.

“Maybe we should run,” suggested Elsie.

Steve shook his head. “That would probably just
encourage it. Besides, I don’t really want to turn my back on it, do you?”

“So we just wait for it to run down the hill and rip our throats out?” said Elsie. “That doesn’t sound like a particularly good plan either.”

They stared at the Hound and the creature stared back but didn’t move a muscle.

“Look,” said Belladonna, “why don’t we walk away slowly? That’s what they always say on those wildlife programs on the telly. If, you know, if a grizzly is after them or something.”

Elsie and Steve thought about this for a moment.

“Okay,” he said finally, “yeah. Slowly.”

They began to move away from the dog, through the narrow gulley and up the opposite rise. The Hound didn’t move; it just watched them go and drooled.

Once they’d reached the top of the next rise, they began to feel more confident—maybe it was just watching. They walked down the other side with more of a spring in their step.

“Maybe he can see through the eyes of the dog,” suggested Steve. “I saw a film like that once. There was this scientist. It was on an island, I think. Or was that another film? Anyway, the point is, he had all these animals that were in his power and—”

“My mother says films are vulgar,” volunteered Elsie. “She says educated people don’t go.”

“Your mother sounds like a whole heap of fun,” said Steve.

“Steve . . .” Belladonna yanked the sleeve of his jacket. “He’s back.”

He turned around and sure enough, there was the Hound on the crest of the rise they’d just come down. They looked at each other and carefully repeated what they’d done before: They walked slowly through the valley and up the next small hill. The Hound stayed where he was until they vanished from sight and then ran after them until he could see them again.