The Winter Witch (43 page)

Oh, how I long to stay with him! To follow him wherever it is he will lead me, knowing that as long as I am with him no harm can come to me. But I cannot stay. I force myself to pull away and look up into his dear face. Again I shake my head, but this time my meaning is different. Already he can sense I am drawing away from him.

No, Dada. I cannot stay.

“Do not go back,
cariad.
Come with me, child.”

I move away, withdrawing from him, feeling as if my heart is being torn in two. It would be so easy to stay, to remain with him, the father I have missed so very much all these long years. The father who understands me better than I understand myself. But I cannot. There is someone who needs me. Cai’s very survival depends on me, and I will not abandon him. My place, now, is at
his
side.

I must turn back, Dada. I have to go back.

Seeing the torment written plainly on my face he smiles faintly and nods.

“I am proud of you, daughter. We will be together again, one day, when the time is right. You have the magic blood, Morgana. Use your power. Go back and tread the path that was meant for you,
cariad.
”

And so I force myself back, back into consciousness, back into the room, back to Isolda. There is a roaring inside my head now, a terrible sound, as if the side of a mountain is collapsing. And then I am returned, my eyes opened, my vision restored. I stand firm, holding Isolda’s gaze. It may be my fancy, but I believe I discern surprise there, or is it, perhaps, a little fear?

“Well, well,” says she, “I did not think to see you put up such a fight, witch-girl.”

Her voice is steady, but I sense her nervousness now. I can taste it. And yet still she will not release me. Still she thinks to torment me. To have what she wants at any cost.

I must still my whirling mind. I must do what I came to do. I stagger to my feet and shut out her mocking voice. I shut out the pentacle. I shut out the memory of Dada. I shut out everything so that I may concentrate my thoughts, direct them to call, to summon, to plead with the Witches of the Well.

Help me. Come to my aid now. Assist me in my cause to stop this fiendish, wicked creature, who would use you and your wisdom to her own callous, terrible ends.

I repeat the entreaty, over and over, keeping the
Grimoire
clear in my mind’s sight, just as Mrs. Jones taught me. I must not fear its power. It is mine to command now.

I am the mistress of Ffynnon Las! Keeper of the
Grimoire
and owner of the Blue Well. Come to me now and wash away the darkness that surrounds me!

For an agonizing moment there is nothing and I fear I have failed. But now, faint at first, but growing stronger, I hear two distinct sounds. The distant chiming of the sweetest bell imaginable, ringing clear and true, slowly building until the chamber is filled with its ringing. Isolda hears it, too, and I see her glance about her. Her nervousness gives me hope.

The second noise heralds a force unleashed that turns her anxiety into naked fear. Water. Water rushing in. Now it comes! Surging down through the passageway, torrential, violent, unstoppable, it pours into the chamber with such speed that in seconds it is up to our knees. I see it, but I do not fear it. For I am stepping in spirit, and need no air to breathe here.

Isolda lets out a cry of rage. She raises her arms and begins chanting in strange tongues, over and over, whirling and spinning as she does so, causing a whirlpool about her, even as the water rises to her thighs. Pressure builds about us. The pressure not of the elements, but of magic fighting against magic.

Suddenly, with such abruptness that it takes me a moment to understand what has happened, the deluge ceases. Not a drop of water moves. I stare down at the blueness which surrounds me and now I understand. I no longer stand in water, but in ice. Isolda has stopped the flood in its progress in an instant, by freezing it.

She laughs at me now, relief and delight lighting up her face. She looks triumphant.

“Is that really all you have to muster? You have the
Grimoire
at your disposal and this is what you make manifest?” She gives a derisive wave of her arm and continues to laugh at me.

It will not do. Really, it will not.

I narrow my attention so that it is entirely in this moment, in this place, and I summon my will.
My
will. I may be unpracticed with the
Grimoire,
but I have the magic inside me. Dada’s magic blood. I bring all my thoughts to one point, just as I did when I restored Catrin’s china. As I did when I mended Cai’s wounded arm. I pull all my strength to me until I feel the air crackle with it. I listen hard. I sniff the damp air of the chamber. With my senses at witchwalking pitch I can easily detect the presence of other beings. There are so many of them, moving and squeaking and squirming in the drains and the narrow culverts and tunnels that run in a labyrinth beneath the houses and streets of the town. I smell their warm, dirty bodies. I hear their teeth gnawing hungrily on whatever they can find. For they are hungry. Very hungry. This sudden winter has quickly brought them to near starvation. From somewhere deep within me I find the strength to overcome my own fears, my own natural repugnance. And I call to them.

Come, little brothers and sisters. Come to me, and I will give you such a feast, such a banquet … your bellies will be full tonight and your fur slick with the fresh blood of your kill.

I know Isolda will have heard me, too, but she cannot know what I have planned. Or if she does, she does not consider me capable of making it happen, for she shows no sign that she is afraid, though in truth she has ample reason to be.

Now I shift my thoughts to the wall behind her. It is centuries old, its stones pocked and water worn, its mortar crumbling. I can shift these stones. I know I can. I narrow my eyes and summon my strength, with more determination, with more ferocity, with more anger than I have ever used to summon it before. At first the task seems impossible. I redouble my efforts, yet still there is no discernable effect.

Isolda watches me with a dry smile upon her lips, amused by my apparently ineffectual struggles. Almost idly she sways this way and that, diminishing the ice that covers the floor of the chamber, so that it begins to recede. Clearly she no longer considers me a threat.

But I am.

The first stone moves barely an inch, accompanied by a small grating noise as it shifts minutely. Isolda hears the sound, but cannot detect its source. I continue. Now a second stone moves. Now another. And another. She sees what I have done and sneers.

“Do you think to bring my own house down upon me, witch-girl? Do you seriously believe yourself capable of such a thing?”

No
, I let her read my thoughts, hoping it will buy me a few moments more.
I do not.

“Ah! Only now you decide to communicate with me. What a shame you did not think to do so sooner. Who knows what arrangement we might have come to, had you shown some spirit of … cooperation,” says she. But neither of us believe there is any truth in her words. She walks over to one of the holes I have made in the wall, putting her head on one side to examine it.

“Poor Morgana. Such hard work, for you. Why bother? Why not just lie down and sleep. So much nicer, so much more dignified than all this futile struggling.”

At last another stone moves, this time from several feet up they wall. It dislodges with such speed and force that it flies from its place and crashes to the floor next to Isolda. Mortar and mud and stone shatter and spread to her feet. In quick succession, four more stones do the same. But the gaps they leave remain empty, nothing more than dark spaces letting in cold air and the occasional trickle of icy water. For a moment I think they have not heard me; that they will not come. I call again.

Come, little ones. Hurry, my hungry friends. Hurry to the feast!

The first grey-brown nose pokes from a hole behind Isolda, so that she does not see it. It drops from its tunnel, its skinny body and hairless tail close to the ground as it begins to circle her. More whiskers appear in the same hole, and then, quickly, myriad snouts and beady eyes begin to emerge from all the spaces I have created, so that within seconds the floor appears alive with rats. They scamper and scuttle as they pour into the chamber, raising their heads to sniff for food, exposing their long yellow teeth as they do so.

At first I think that they ignore me because I am here in spirit only, and therefore do not offer a potential source of sustenance. But I notice that they take care not to put one wet claw over the outline of the pentacle. Indeed, they avoid it as if it were drawn in fire. There are hundreds of them now, and still more stream forth from the gaps between the stones. Isolda curses and stamps her feet to shake off the first few bold ones who have already begun to nip at her toes. One, particularly large, even in its reduced state, with dense black fur, drops directly onto Isolda’s shoulder. It clings on as she grasps it by the neck and pulls at it. It is determined, digging its sharp claws into the fabric of her dress, but she wrenches it from her and hurls it across the room with such strength I hear its spine snap. Its corpse falls into the melee of its cousins, who, scenting fresh blood, fall upon it, biting and nipping. It is as if a signal has been given for the frenzy of feeding to begin. Suddenly, as if they were one many-headed beast, the rats surge forward and swarm over Isolda.

She lets out a furious scream, snatching at the rodents as they climb and crawl over her, plucking them from her to fling them this way and that with unnaturally swift and forceful movements. But there are too many, too many for her to fend off, they come at such a rate. Soon she is entirely covered in the squealing, stinking creatures, as they hang from her fingers, from her bodice and skirts, from her hair, burrowing into her clothes, biting and clawing, sensing the feast that is theirs for the taking. And still more rats tumble into the room, so that the flagstones are a writhing mass around me, revealing the shape of the star in which I crouch.

Isolda continues to shriek and rage, flinging her arms, shaking her head, kicking and staggering about, but she is completely covered with pulsating, chattering creatures who hang on with teeth and claws, taking every opportunity to bite and chew. Repulsive noises fill the air—sounds of flesh being torn and blood being slurped. As the smothered figure blunders about the room trails and spurts of blood splatter over more hungry rats which fight for a taste of what their kin have found. I watch in horror at what I have brought about. I am compelled to watch, though I fear it is a vision that will haunt my dreams for the rest of my days.

Just as it seems she will be overcome, will be pulled to the ground, savaged, and devoured by hundreds of hungry mouths, Isolda ceases her flailing and stands motionless, save for the undulation of the living fur coat she wears. She utters a long, low sound that chills my soul. It is neither a cry of pain, nor a scream of rage. It is very clearly a summoning, a calling, an asking. Of whom or of what I fear to fathom, but the temperature in the chamber drops dramatically. The discordant, rising note is sustained for an impossibly long out-breath, strong and unwavering, flat and droning, menacing beyond imagination. Even the rats seem to sense danger in the stillness that follows. Some of them drop from her body and slink away. Others pause in their frenzy. There is a small moment of total calm where all movement, all sound, all life, it seems, is stilled.

And then the beast is unleashed.

The rats still clinging to Isolda, or what
was
Isolda, are flung to the far reaches of the room, smashing against the stone walls. From beneath them emerges a twisting, throbbing shape that grows as it shakes and convulses, ridding itself of its parasitic passengers, contorting and enlarging until it, until
she,
is completely transformed. For it is no longer a woman who stands before me but a green-scaled, monstrous serpent. It raises its colossal head high, its yellow eyes glowing in the torchlight, its forked tongue flicking in and out of its cruel, lipless mouth. It fills the chamber with a deafening hissing, surely loud enough to wake the dead. The terrified rats turn and flee, scrambling over one another in their haste to escape, clawing at the wall to reach the holes through which they entered. But the giant snake strikes with deadly speed, snatching mouthfuls of the panicking creatures, swallowing them in great, wriggling gulps. In a matter of seconds the chamber is cleared, the rats gone, either eaten or fled. Only I remain, my spirit still imprisoned in the pentacle. And the coiling, bulging serpent, which slides silently around the room, never for one second taking its eyes from me.

It is a further shock to hear Isolda’s voice coming from this terrible apparition.

“Your actions are tiresome in the extreme, witch-girl,” says she as she slips past me.

“You must know you cannot vanquish me. Why persist in delaying the inevitable conclusion? Desist in these pointless attempts upon me. Nothing will come of your efforts. All that is required of you now is that you give in, submit to the inevitable. To the end. To me.”

The creature’s muscles ripple as it propels itself round and round, gathering speed. For a moment I think she plans to coil herself around me and crush the life from me, but I realize, of course, that in my witchwalking state she cannot harm me physically. All the evil animal strength of her repulsive form is useless against me in my spirit state. She has tried to send me to another place, to weaken me, and to tempt me with my dear father. Was it even truly him I saw? Or was it merely a trick, another spell cast by Isolda to suck me to my death? I will never be certain. What I do know is that, without my body here to destroy, there are few ways she can bring about my end. Indeed, her only option would seem to be to hold me here, captive, until I am stayed too long from my body and have not the strength to return. But how long? How long can I exist a stepping soul, disembodied and wandering? She asked me the question, but I myself do not truly know the answer. I know that I am weakening. That I feel increasingly weary. Increasingly faint. I do not have much time. I must use it wisely.