The Witch's Revenge

Also by D. A. Nelson
DarkIsle

With thanks to
Keith, Graham and Alison at Strident for all
their support over the past few years;
to all the
DarkIsle
fans (young and old)
I've met during my travels;
to Ian for making me sit at my computer
when I'd rather watch TV.

Breathless and desperate, the boy staggered across the beach. The hard sand was covered in broken shells that jabbed his feet like tiny knives. He ignored the pain and took a deep breath of the fresh sea air. Overhead, gulls screeched:
fool, fool, fool!
He closed his ears to their goading and tried to clear his head.

His knuckles began to throb again. The numbness that had spread after the punch had subsided and he clasped his fist to dull the ache. He was cold and sore and hungry. But he was free, and his father would never hurt him again. The boy smiled as he remembered the blow he had landed on his old man's stupid face. His father had been on at him again, calling him a fool and pushing him around to go out and bring money in to feed his hunger.

“You're a lazy good-for-nothing boy!”

The words still echoed around James's head and he shut his eyes, squeezing with all his might to rid them from his mind, but he could not purge himself of the memory of the wicked look in his father's eyes as the man once more raised his fist. Even the thought of it made him catch his breath and his eyes flew open in terror.

He looked around, his heart beating ten to the dozen, scared he was being followed. The beach was empty save for a few seabirds digging for razor clams. The only sounds were the calming whoosh of the waves as they smoothed the sand.

The punch had been totally out of character for James. Normally, he would have taken the beating, but something inside him had snapped. He had decided he would never suffer at his father's hands again. So he had knocked him down and run out of their tiny farmhouse forever. To go where, he didn't know.

Now he found himself on a beach, kicking up stones and wondering what to do next. He couldn't go home, no matter how hard his mother pleaded, so the only alternative was to go south to seek his fortune.

Roawwwl
.

His stomach grumbled, reminding him he had not eaten yet. Not that hunger was unusual. His father drank the few pennies he and his brothers and sisters made from working the land, so there was never enough food. However, today was the start of his new life and he wasn't about to start it hungry. He searched for a good sharp stone to prize the
clams off the jagged rocks. A few looked promising, but as he lifted them he knew they would shatter. On the other side of the beach he spied the perfect specimen. It was a large flattish stone lying at the shallow end of one of the larger rock pools. He bent down, scooped it out of the icy water and weighed it in his hand. It was solid. Perfect. He smiled. The prospect of eating those clams sent his brain into a frenzy of longing.

He was about to walk away from the rock pool to collect some driftwood for a fire when something else under the water, something large and smooth and very white, caught his eye. What was it? It glowed enticingly, almost as if calling to him. Without thinking, he knelt by the edge of the pool and plunged his arm in. There was something strange about this particular stone. It was
warm
, and as his fingers wrapped around it, the stone began to glimmer as though a shaft of light had struck it. It made a buzzing sound that intensified as it was pulled from the water. James stared at it in astonishment. It was a smooth lozenge-shaped stone, a little bigger than a rugby ball and unlike anything he had seen before. The buzzing grew even louder and the stone's light even brighter, until suddenly there was a flash and the boy was thrown backward onto the sand. He momentarily blacked out.

“Are you all right, lad?” a stranger's voice said from somewhere far away.

The boy dragged himself back to consciousness. His eyes fluttered open and he looked at the kindly face peering down at him. He nodded dumbly.

“You've found it!” said the man, staring in wonder at the stone in James's hands. “There were legends of it falling from the sky. Such a bright light, our ancestors said. And they searched the sea for it. The tides must have washed it ashore. What's your name?” The man's green eyes sparkled as he helped the boy to sit up.

“James, sir,” the boy replied weakly. “James Montgomery.”

“Colm Breck,” replied the man, holding out a hand in friendship. As James went to take it, the man unexpectedly fell to his knees. “Hail young James Montgomery: finder of the Eye of Lornish!”

The dodo frowned and waggled his tail feathers as he read and then reread the online article. A ritualistic dagger in a human museum had, according to the only witness—a white-faced curator—simply vanished before his eyes.
Nothing vanishes in the human world
, the dodo thought,
without something being affected here
, and he clicked the video link to pick up more clues from the interview.

The curator was a thin man with wispy yellow hair and a squirming nervousness that made Bertie flinch with embarrassment for him. Wringing the bottom of his jacket with his hands, the man related his extraordinary tale. He had been on his usual late-night rounds checking the exhibits when he had stopped in the armory section. In the dim light
the gleaming dagger, housed in an unbreakable glass case, had caught his attention.

“I went over to look at it, to check it was all right, and then … well … I watched it vanish like a wisp of smoke,” he told the interviewer, his eyes darting about apprehensively. “One minute it was there, the next it wasn't. Pop, it was gone. I've never seen anything like it before in my life,” he continued. “It was almost as if it was
magic.
”

Bertie's little dodo eyes narrowed.
Magic? In the human world?
He hoped not. The video clip showed the empty glass case as a grim-faced blond reporter closed the story.

“Police are baffled by the incident and confirm that the museum's security systems show no one broke into the building,” she said. “One thing's for sure, this will go down as one of the most puzzling disappearances of this century.…”

The dodo stared at the screen for a few seconds before closing the link. This was all wrong. “
It was almost as if it was
magic.” The curator's final words jigged about in his head and he frowned. If magic had been used, why would someone from his world need a ritualistic dagger from a human museum? There were many excellent shops in Marnoch Mor where you could get anything you wanted, including magical daggers. It didn't make sense.

He slid from his chair and grabbed a bundle of news stories he had printed off earlier. He shuffled over to a large red sofa wedged up against the far wall and took from its broad back a yellow ring binder marked:
Weird Happenings of the Human World
. He opened it and placed the cuttings inside:
“Cursed Egyptian Charm Disappears”
read one;
“No Clues to Whereabouts of Priceless Jade Cup”
read another;
“Reward for Return of Ancient Spell Book”
said the third. They had all gone missing in the last two days, and Bertie was beginning to feel uneasy about what that might mean.

He closed his binder with a snap and returned it to the sofa. He yawned. This would have to wait until the morning; it was too late to do anything about it tonight. Maybe if he slept on it, a pattern behind the disappearances might come to him. With that thought, he left his study and made his way down the hallway.