Slow Poison

by Helen Slavin

  “Eat the cake before I do,” Winn warned and pushed the box closer. Emz’s shaking hand just about managed to pick out a bakewell tart criss-crossed with pastry and sparkling with caster sugar. She put it on the plate but did not eat it.

  “So. That was… quite an experience,” Vanessa began. “They’re offering you a chance to defer your exams. What do you reckon?”

  Emz did not like the prospect; it would just put off the fact for another year and then she’d still be in the same boat. There was a passing thought of Logan Boyle, but it did just that, passed along the staircase of her mind.

  “I don’t want to do that.” Emz thought she could see where this was heading, that Winn was here as backup, to make the threat, do your exams or don’t do Prickles, but then Winn spoke up.

  “Do you want a job here as a wildlife ranger?” she asked and reached for a large square of chocolate cake. Emz looked at her mother. Her mother waited for the response.

  “Yes. Obviously. You know that.”

  She waited for the threat, come on, bring it.

  “I’ve got funding from the WildWood Society, that bunch of townie loons in Castlebury. Do you want the job?”

  Emz looked at her mother, who picked up the remainder of her religieuse and ate it in one creamy squodge.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you have to finish your A levels.” Winn was definite about this. There it was. What a scam.

  “But if I…” she looked at her mother. Vanessa sipped some tea before speaking.

  “That’s the bargain, Emily. Take the job but finish your exams. Do it this year. Get them done and dusted.” She sounded reasonable but the use of Emz’s full name indicated her intent.

  “I don’t need A levels. I don’t want to go to university.” Emz wanted to make her feelings clear, felt relieved at having been forced to say it out loud.

  “I know. Not a problem,” Vanessa said.

  “Then why bother with my exams? Why not just take up the ranger job now?”

  “You can’t,” Winn looked grumpy. “I don’t give a squirrel’s arse about it myself but it’s out of my hands. It’s part of the rules of the funding, the WildWood people want A levels. Minimum requirements.”

  There was a moment of silence and thought. Emz looked at her mother. Vanessa smiled sympathetically and gave a small shrug.

  “Yes. Please. I’ll do it,” Emz said in a quiet voice.

  “Sorted,” Vanessa said and winked, a gesture that was so filled with Grandma Hettie that Emz could not stop herself from crying.

  30

  Foxed

  It was dark by the time Anna, Charlie, Emz, and Ailith had walked through Havoc Wood and out into town to the castle. They had come up from the river path through the quieter streets of town.

  Even here the effects of the leaking magic seemed apparent. There was loud music blaring from one house, the heavy drum bass beat pounding at the air. Elsewhere there were raised voices. At another the women could hear someone crying. Here and there was the mini blast of a door slamming. Harsh words. Somewhere in the distance a cat screeched, a dog howled.

  The group walked up onto the banking below the curtain wall and one by one made their less than elegant progress up the tree and over the wall, Emz tearing her sweatshirt on a stray jag of branch. With everyone safe on the wall they processed down to the greensward.

  “Are we sure it was this stone?” Anna asked Charlie as they upended the heavy slab they had used to hide the warrior’s head and found nothing but an empty hole beneath. Charlie looked into the disturbed earth.

  “Yes. Look.” She picked out the last draggles of the flowers they had lined the spot with.

  “I’m looking. I was just trying to put off the panic,” Anna admitted. “The head is definitely not there.”

  They all peered into the void. Ailith looked stricken.

  “Someone has taken him?” Her voice was a tiny moan. She began to look around. Her shoulders were tight.

  The Way sisters looked at Ailith, then at each other. Charlie spoke up first.

  “I can hear the stones again. Low level. Like a deep drone. Not as fierce this time.”

  The other sisters listened and heard nothing. “What does that mean, d’you think?”

  “Residual magic.” Anna suggested.

  “Like leftovers?” Emz looked pale. “So, you think someone has taken him?”

  Anna shrugged.

  “They want to use the power,” Anna said, and the three sisters seemed to shrink a little at the thought.

  “We just handed it over. As if the castle was a drop-off point,” Charlie’s voice was as heavy as the stones; she stepped forward. Unconsciously they had formed their triangle, Ailith central to it, protected. There were several moments of silence.

  Anna shook her head.

  “No. Nothing from Havoc is that easy,” Anna’s voice was cool and calm and made Charlie even tenser as a result. She dug her hands deep into her sweatshirt pockets.

  “This is what I’m talking about. We don’t know anything do we? There’s no user’s manual for all this.” The tension trilled between them.

  “And who wants it?” Emz asked. Anna looked severe, glanced at Charlie.

  “Who knows about him except us?” Charlie reasoned. Ailith flinched slightly and, witnessing it, Charlie asked, “What is it?”

  The sisters turned to Ailith.

  “On the journey. At the split oak, I slept.”

  The Witch Ways were none the wiser and waited for Ailith to continue. She looked stricken as she continued.

  “The woman. I was safe in the oak but… perhaps she followed.”

  “Trespasser.” Charlie said the word with no emotion, flat, factual.

  “Oh my God. The Trespasser.” Emz was hopping back and forth on her back foot at the thought, put her hands over her face. Anna started to nod.

  “Everything kicked off yesterday, that means the head was still here, still leaking its magic…”

  “Oh God, yes. Like an alarm. Like we said. A big massive smoke signal of magic.”

  Charlie nodded, her train of thought chugging decisively forwards.

  “Yep. This woman, still on Ailith’s trail maybe, hanging around Havoc on the off chance…”

  “… and picked up the trail.” Anna finished the thought.

  “Boom.” Charlie said with a nod.

  “She could still be within the bounds of Havoc. They might not have got out yet.” Anna picked out the small splinter of hope.

  “Let’s go.” Charlie began to make her way across the greensward with Ailith at her side and Anna a step or two behind. Behind her, Emz was side-tracked by a sudden movement by the far wall. She halted. There. Something moving steadily. There by the wall. Waiting now. Watching for them.

  Charlie, Anna, and Emz were part way up the steps to the cobbled yard when Anna looked back and noticed Emz was missing.

  “Emz? Where’s Emz?” The party looked around. There was no sign of their sister. If they felt panicked at the loss of the head, the panic now spiralled to critical mass. Charlie leapt off the steps onto the sward. They all began looking for her.

  “Emz?” Their whispered calls were growing hoarser and then, suddenly, she was there.

  “Hey,” her voice called out. Anna, Charlie, and Ailith spun around. Emz was striding towards them from the dark shadows by the potting shed. “This way,” and as quickly as she had appeared she vanished again.

  The three streamed towards the potting shed, Charlie just in time to see Emz’s booted foot as it disappeared behind the shed.

  “What the…”

  At the back of the shed the wall curved into the bottom of the keep tower and, if followed round, the curve ended in what looked like a drain gulley, a thin rill of stone set back. One step into the rill revealed the hidden stairway. Emz was already down there; the others could follow the small glow of light from her phone.

  “What is this?” Anna asked as they stood in the tunn
el. It was dank and mossy and smelt powerfully of fox.

  “It’s the siege tunnel,” Emz was matter of fact, “from the Civil War. Remember, when Cromwell threw a shoe and Lady Hartfield didn’t surrender? This is how they survived.”

  Charlie was less than impressed.

  “We’re on a clock here, Emz. We need to hunt down the head thief and you’re giving us a history lesson?”

  Emz stood her ground.

  “Remember the last time we were here, and I saw the fox through the gate? I said, ‘how did the fox get in?’ only we didn’t bother, even I didn’t pay attention to it, it’s a fox. We were distracted. But this…” she made a sweeping gesture at the dank darkness before them, “…is how the fox gets in.” Emz seemed excited by the discovery.

  “Well, great, but how does this help us?” Anna asked looking puzzled and feeling the heat rise out of Charlie. Emz inhaled deeply.

  “Breathe in. Smell.”

  They all breathed in; Ailith’s face lightened.

  “Honey and wood smoke.” Charlie understood the implication.

  “The head was carried through here. It’s left a scent.”

  Ailith took several steps forward, halting where the darkness deepened.

  “Where does it go?” Charlie asked. Anna stepped forward and placed her hand on Charlie’s shoulder.

  “As Grandma Hettie used to say...” Anna began. Charlie nodded.

  “I know, I know… ‘Which way Charlie?’” Her expression was gruff but inside she felt her Strength glimmer. Like riding that rusty old bike.

  Charlie cleared her throat and looked down into the darkness of the tunnel. At first all she could see was the darkness because, as usual, she was overthinking it. Don’t push. She let the idea of a task slip from her mind and she thought of the fox. At once the mossy dankness revealed a green cushioned path off into the distance that broke out into Leap Woods. A hillock, stranded over with ivy and clogged with bramble, the rot of an old door colonised by fungus.

  “Leap Woods. Just up on the far side of Cooper’s Pond.” She felt uplifted by this small new piece of knowledge and as she didn’t think about it she could see the track the fox took, the small paws printing into her head, trees towering above before the fox looked back at her.

  At once Charlie set off along the tunnel.

  “Charlie?” Anna’s voice was muffled against the damp moss of the walls as her sister disappeared into the darkness. The others followed, Emz holding up her phone, the soft white light illuminating their way, catching at the edges of Charlie as she hurried forwards.

  After some minutes they scrambled out of the raggedy exit into the tangle and stumble of Leap Woods and Charlie was still running onwards down the rise of the banking.

  “Here.” She stopped. There was a hole dug into the ground, a fox’s earth. Charlie hunkered down and took a glance inside. The earth seemed to be unoccupied.

  “There. The fox saved him,” Ailith pointed and the Way sisters looked up to where the fox was sitting a short distance above them, watching. Charlie reached inside the hole, her arm flailing at nothing and yet, there was something.

  “I can’t reach.” She pulled out, brushing the dirt and draggle of dead roots off her arm. “Emz, can you fit down there?”

  She took a step forward.

  “It should be Ailith. Not any of us. It has to be her, she’s the guardian.” Emz stood aside, nodded to Ailith.

  The head, although slightly bedraggled, had not suffered overmuch from its adventure.

  “It’s not chewed… much.” Anna brushed some earth from the socket of the eye as Ailith cradled the head. He still looked as though he were sleeping very heavily.

  “Right. We’d better make tracks.”

  * * *

  It took them almost an hour to walk through Leap Woods into the edges of Havoc Wood and from there up towards Knightstone and the almost hidden curve of Yarl Hill. It marked, Anna realised, a boundary for Havoc Wood itself, a boundary she recalled walking, that long-ago day, with Grandma Hettie, her black waxed coat cracking in the whipping summer breeze. Herepath. Ridgewayed rampart. As they began the steep pull out of the trees she saw at once the manmade curves of the hillfort:

  “The lookout line.”

  Grandma Hettie’s face, wrinkled against the intense sunshine, the strong summer breeze whipping her hair as they had walked the perimeter of the place. So long ago.

  At the top, the views were astonishing. As they all stood on the zig-zag path to catch their breath, Ailith cradling her precious bundle, they looked back across Woodcastle and on towards Castlebury itself and Woodhill and Kingham, lit up like twinkling beacons. The trees of Leap Woods and Havoc Woods clothed the slopes and valleys, the River Rade itself flashing into view just here, over there.

  “Which is the western gate?” Emz asked as they clambered up onto the base of the hillfort. “Should we have brought a compass?”

  “No need,” Charlie said from up ahead.

  “Of course… your Strength…” Anna puffed to meet her sister. Charlie shook her head and pointed.

  On the far side of the hillfort a group of seven horses cropped the grass. They were saddled up and the riders were waiting by the scooped-out rampart. The Ways looked at each other, then at Ailith.

  “Do you know them?” Anna asked. Ailith shook her head, folded the warrior’s head deeper into her tattered coat, stood straighter. Anna took in a deep breath.

  “Alright,” Anna’s voice was low, conspiratorial. “We can think this through. If they were here to attack…”

  “They’d have done it by now,” Emz suggested.

  “Yep. When we were down there on the slope, wrong-footed and easy pickings,” Charlie concluded. The riders looked unhurried; they were moving now, grouping themselves but in the way of people waiting to greet guests, not enemies.

  “They’re here to pay their respects,” Emz said. She couldn’t see faces clearly in the deep bronze darkness. “They don’t feel bad.” It was a very clear sensation. They felt, if anything, slightly chilled and weary. They had, Emz could tell, come a long way.

  “Seven horses,” Emz said. “But only six riders.”

  Charlie and Anna nodded.

  “Let’s do this.” Anna took the lead.

  The small Bone Resting party made its way over to the riders. As they did so they became aware of a small circle of glowing flames, small unearthly tea lights, set into the grass that covered the western gate.

  “Welcome, Wanderers.” The words came out of Anna’s mouth without her having to think about them, it was as if the wind blew them into her. The riders gave small bows and in the light the Ways took them in.

  There were, indeed, six of them, and, it appeared, they were all women. Dressed to ride they wore leather breeches draped with what Anna could only think of as kilts, the fabric woven with earthen colours, one woman in tones of umber, another in greens, like, Anna thought, a badge of colour. Their jackets were protective, leather moulded to their forms and strengthened here and there with metal plate that had been etched and scratched at in equal measure. Raggedy looking shirts straggled and frayed from beneath a further layer of warm looking coloured woollen jerkin.

  “We thank you, Witch Way, for your greeting,” and the chief amongst them, wearing a penannular brooch that pinned a frazzle of black wool to her shoulder, gave a courtly bow that Anna felt compelled to return. Behind her, Ailith, Charlie, and Emz did the same. The sense that the riders gave was of the oldest of friends. “We give our sorrow at your grandam’s passing.” At this all the riders gave a deeper bow and with the movement the women gave off a combined scent of sweat and horse, of leather and wormwood.

  “Bring the warrior rest.” One of the riders stepped forward, her voice soft, her arm stretched out to Ailith. “Let the glims light his way.”

  Ailith stepped forward; already, in the circle of glims, there was a hole dug, neat and deep. Ailith stepped into the light of the glims and as she did so they
burned higher and brighter and the riders began to speak.

  “Rest him by herepath…”

  The Ways joined in at once, the words rising together in the soft night quiet of Yarl Hill,

  “…and ridgewayed rampart, that he might be, at last, the Watchman at the Western Gate.”

  The flames burnt brighter, whiter, and the chief of the riders stepped forward and touched Ailith on the shoulder. Ailith knelt, and placed the head into the hole, the face outwards, watching, forever, the landscape beyond.

  “Be wakeful, Watcher.” The chief rider threw a handful of earth onto the head, the others followed, and then the Ways. The chief rider left Ailith until last. Ailith’s handful of dirt scattered as if alive, rolling and compacting itself and the grass knitted back so that the small Bone Resting place was not visible. The glims lowered.

  Anna watched Ailith’s face, the tears that she was wiping away, and she stepped forward, put her hand on her arm.

  “We can find a way for you, Ailith, don’t worry,” she reassured her. Ailith looked at her, her face stark and raw with fear.

  “Her way lies with us,” the chief rider said. Anna’s hand did not leave Ailith’s arm; if necessary there would be a tug of war. Anna felt protective. The chief rider smiled.

  “We are the TaskMistresses, we ride and do whatever must be done. In the taking on of this task that she was not set, Ailith has proved she is one of our number.”

  Ailith looked uncertainly from the rider to Anna.

  “This… this is my way?” Ailith asked. Anna looked at the chief rider, looked around at the others. One was already reaching into the saddle bag of the seventh horse and pulling out a woollen jerkin, a leather jacket, leather breeches, and a kilt, woven in a golden autumn yellow. Anna turned to Emz and Charlie. Charlie nodded.