Slow Poison

by Helen Slavin

  “Seven horses…” Emz said.

  “Six riders,” said Charlie.

  Ailith was already scrambling out of her own rags and into the leather breeches.

  * * *

  It was a cold walk back to Cob Cottage. Charlie, hands deep in pockets, frog marched ahead of them.

  “The Lookout Line. How could I forget?” Anna was angry with herself and not a little anxious. “And Yarl Hill fort? How much time did we spend here as kids?” She looked to Charlie’s back. Her sister did not turn.

  “Loads of time but how could you remember it all?” Emz chimed in, trudging beside her. “There’s so much to remember. We can’t do it all.”

  Charlie halted.

  “We can. We have to.”

  Emz and Anna looked crestfallen, but Charlie was harsh.

  “We have made a mistake. A big one. We can’t afford to be this careless. Ever.”

  They could not see her face clearly, but they could hear the edge of tears in her voice and when she turned away from them and began to stride once more towards Cob Cottage, Emz and Anna did not chase her.

  It felt dark. It felt cold. Nothing would ever be the same.

  31

  No Rest with the Wicked

  After a successful Bone Resting and a wayfinding for Ailith, the Way sisters might have expected, hoped even, that the next day would be blue skies and blueberry muffins all round; instead it was burnt toast and bad dreams.

  Anna had been up within a few hours of going to bed as she was on breakfast duty this morning. Emz was putting the finishing touches to a history essay and burning some toast, as, instead of her alarm, Charlie found herself being woken by a bad dream.

  It had been the same dream all week. She had made her way out of the garden and the Wood and was in a rather elaborate greenhouse, something cobbled together out of what looked like driftwood trees. She was surrounded by pots of herbs and beyond the windows there were other beds and potagers that seemed to whisper in the wind.

  It was the same sensation as in the castle. The herbage was trying to convey something. She glanced down at the lists she had made and began to shuffle them like playing cards; the lists blanked and refilled until she had one list and just as she was about to read it the wind caught it, slapped it against the window of the greenhouse so that it couldn’t be peeled away. She understood at last what had to go onto the list and reached for a pencil. As she leaned on the paper to write the last herb on the list the pane cracked and at the sound she awoke.

  Charlie sat with the list she had compiled at her bedside. It was by now several pages of crossing out and scribbling in and she turned the page sideways to fill a fresh space at the edge of the page. The pen hovered with her thought: what was that last herb? How had she seen it in the dream? There had been a scent. Charlie always dreamt in scents. Damn, she should have concentrated on remembering that. There was no use for it, she was too wired to try to drop back into the dream now.

  * * *

  With high levels of adrenalin white-water rafting themselves through her bloodstream Charlie offered Emz a lift and they left Cob Cottage.

  It felt like a relief to be away from the cottage and in the relative normalcy of the brewhouse at Drawbridge. Even before she had pulled in at the car park Charlie had wound the window down to let the first scent of the brewhouse drift towards her. She breathed in deep, letting the breeze rustle at her rather untidy hair. Nothing. A vague whiff from the sewage works possibly, over in Castlebury. She grew uneasy.

  At the brewery Michael’s car was parked up alongside Jack’s motorbike and the Morris Minor Traveller that Ryan borrowed from his gran when he’d pranged his Nissan. Charlie was surprised at the lack of visible brewery activity.

  In the office Michael was sitting at the computer, his head balanced on his hand so that his cheek was crumpled up. He was staring at the screen, clicking idly at a game.

  “What are you doing?” Charlie was harsh. What was going on today? She glanced down into the yard at the rear to see Jack and Ryan squabbling, the squabble reaching the point of pointing fingers and heads jabbed forward.

  “Losing.” Michael’s voice was low and sleepy. Charlie reached over and clicked the screen out of the game. Michael slumped sideways slightly. “You might as well shut it down, I’m shit at it.”

  “Get out of the chair and get the kettle on. Brew us some coffee. I’m going down to the brewhouse to see what isn’t going on there…”

  “We’ve got kegs and kegs of beer…” Michael smiled. “We don’t need any more.”

  Charlie gave him a pinched look.

  “This is a brewery, Michael. People drink the beer, we brew more.” Charlie felt unsteady as she looked at him. There was something wrong about him, and she couldn’t pinpoint it. Not simply his mood, something more.

  “You have no idea how beautiful you are.” He sounded mournful. Charlie felt a sudden spiking feeling in her chest, recalling the Apple Day fiasco and the way that Michael had nuzzled into her neck “Charlie is my darling”, blushing at the words, the kiss, his voice singing in her head. The blush seared over her face and she folded her arms, drew herself up taller.

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “No. I have been thinking. Much more poisonous.” He gave a despairing sigh and stared at her. His eyes, usually honeyed sugar, were not honeyed sugar this morning. They looked blank and tinny. Clearly, he was suffering one hell of a hangover.

  “Okay, well, you keep doing that and I’ll run the brewery today.” She was too tired to handle the emotions, her heart and mind lit with lightning bolts of confusion and desire. Busy. She needed to sort things out. She turned off down the stairs.

  “When are you going to realise you love me?” His voice was only slightly raised, just enough for her to hear. The spike in her chest stabbed very hard and she did not look back.

  As she entered the yard the squabble was about to become a fight and so she stepped in and caught Ryan’s fist as it flew towards Jack. Ryan’s face was a dog’s, snarling, bared. He pushed hard at her but Charlie, geed up with her own emotions, pushed harder, Ryan tripping over his own foot and stumbling backwards.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Him… he’s what’s going on… Didn’t put the kettle on for break. Ate the last effing BISCUIT.” Ryan was spitting little dobs of white saliva in his fury. Charlie turned to see Jack sitting on his haunches crying softly.

  “You. I want you up in the storeroom getting those kegs down for the pickup this afternoon.” She pointed at Jack; at once he was happy, puppy-like as he jumped to his feet.

  “Yes… yes… course… yeah… course… brilliant,” and he headed off. Ryan was sweating anger.

  “It’s a biscuit, Ryan, get over it. In fact…” She had a brainwave, the solution to all the problems currently brewing, ha, in her tired head, pulled out a tenner from her jeans pocket, “…get over to Trim’s Corner and buy us all some biscuits. And get more teabags and some milk while you’re at it.”

  Ryan’s face looked less red and more pink as he calmed and nodded. He gave her a sage look.

  “You talk sense. For a woman.”

  Charlie gave a disapproving grunt and was glad to see the back of him as he climbed up into the cab of the Drawbridge van.

  In the brewhouse she hung up her jacket and, to settle her mind, took a look at the paperwork she had on the anteroom table. Her lists leapt out at her, crossings-out and scribblings-in combined. She assembled them and took a look. She could see where the old gentleman in the dream had reproduced the notes from her head. Her instinct suggested that something was brewing here, something that was worth pursuing if she could just extract it from her brain. It was still, however, something of a puzzle to her and one she felt she would tackle better if she got today’s normal everyday brewing under way.

  Within a few hours Charlie was siphoning the sweet wort into the copper and sparging the mash tun. The air was filled with her favourite aromas and he
r mind swirled and steamed with the brew and was refreshed and clear after the last few days events. She had been relieved that Ailith had found her way, supposing that another option, a less Stuff option, would have been a job at the Castle Inn with Anna, bussing tables or washing dishes perhaps. Charlie scolded herself for trying to ignore the fact that she had shied away from the Word; after she had told her sisters off for calling it Stuff, now she was at it. She had said that not saying the word gave it power.

  It had power. That was its whole purpose. She was afraid that in some small way her own blurting out of that word ‘Magic’, when they had discussed the head, had set something in train. She had released the power simply by saying the word. She knew it was not so in her brain, but in her heart and in her gut, she was unsure.

  That was why the word was difficult to say once you had slept a few nights in Cob Cottage. Those Craft Club twats who were friendly with Roz Woodhill, fannying round the woods, skyclad and in their birds’ nest tiaras, had no idea of the danger. They were running with scissors.

  As Charlie cleared out the mash, she cleared out these thoughts. Then she grabbed up her lists and headed through to the smaller brewhouse where she had all her Blackberry Ferment experimentations stewing and distilling.

  The scent in the small brewhouse was thick and summery and like hot fresh earth. She drained off a little of the Blackberry Bitter she was brewing. The liquor looked better than she’d hoped, the slightly brownish quality of the wort she’d fermented had begun to deepen to a rich and jewel-like purple. She held the glass up to the light from the high mill window and the sunlight shafted in. The scent was good too; just the right amount of sharpness, she thought. She was thinking that the Blackberry Ferment itself might end up too sickly sweet. She thought she’d tap some of that too, to taste what a further day had done to it and reached for another glass. The Blackberry Ferment was not sickly. The colour, once again, was rich and earthy and the liquid had come clear, no sediment floating or sinking. The scent was clean and wild and made her think of Cob Cottage, of the garden, of newly lifted potatoes. As she watched the sunlight shafted through this glass too and she noticed the small rainbow that splashed onto the workbench through the prism of the liquor. She put the Blackberry Ferment spirit beside the Bitter. The prism effect was beautiful.

  She toyed for an hour or more, stirring, decanting, and taking more of the blackberries from the small freezer and starting another recipe, this time using the lists. It seemed to her that all the lists might end up being one recipe; there were reasons why she’d crossed out and scribbled in and now, looking over the five or six different versions, she took the remainders from each list. All the herbs she’d thought of combining were growing in Grandma Hettie’s garden. If she got the wort boiling now she could leave it over lunchtime and pop back to Grandma Hettie’s garden. Except that it wasn’t Grandma’s any longer, was it? It’s yours.

  Dragon. Without warning the word banged into her head, so loudly that she thought someone was behind her and spun round. She was alone. Dragon? What the…? Then she recalled the breaking of the pane of glass in her dream hothouse. The scents drifted across her memory. Her thoughts tumbled and rolled for a moment and then she wrote the words ‘dragon’ and ‘wormwood’ on her hand to remind her when she popped back to Cob Cottage at lunchtime.

  Except that she didn’t get back to Cob Cottage because at lunchtime when she headed into the car park, Aron was waiting.

  He was leaning against the boot of his car wearing what looked like a new leather jacket.

  “How’s it going?” he asked. Charlie recalled their last encounter at Cob Cottage and the myriad texts that she had ignored. He checked his watch. “Got time for a bite of lunch?” and he opened the car door with a smile. Charlie hesitated.

  “You should have texted,” she said. Aron’s face twisted into a wry smile.

  “Surprise,” he said with no surprise. “I know you love surprises.” A wink because he knew, of course, that she did not. “I should have come naked, wrapped in a big red bow,” he joked, his smile stretching across his face and across time, to the first moment she had ever seen that smile.

  “Not if you don’t want me to puke up the lunch.” Charlie made no move to step into the car.

  “I’ve forgotten about the whole Haunted Hell Cottage fight by the way,” he mentioned, his voice casual, his face glancing at the interior of the car. Charlie looked at him. His eyes were a pale-ish blue underneath the glossily black-brown hair that he always wore slightly foppish and got away with.

  “So not forgotten then?” she rallied. It was not going to be as easy as opening a door. He gave her an assessing look, shut the door and approached her.

  “Hey. Round One. Ding, Ding…” He reached to brush her hair back from her face which made her remember that she’d slept in her pony tail and it was probably a Turk’s head knot of hair by now. “What do you want to wrestle me for today?” He stood very, very close but he didn’t kiss her, and she did not kiss him. Their kiss and make up standoffs were a matter of personal pride. He wanted to kiss her, she could see it in those pale-ish blue eyes and in the way he was pressing his lips together, trying to look serious. She moved close to him as she reached for the car door and reopened it. She climbed in.

  “Wrestle you for who is buying lunch.”

  They drove off, at speed, Charlie trying not to see Michael standing in the office window, watching.

  She tried not to see Michael, but the image of him, his arm leaning up against the curved top of the window, stayed in her head and was joined by the feeling of his nuzzling at her neck, his arms around her as she struggled to get him into the van. She was so busy trying to shove all of this aside that she did not see the car pulling out of Smallbridge Road until it was crushing into the side of Aron’s car. The noise, the jolting motion that whipped her almost out of the seat, the world turned sideways very slowly and then stopped very quickly as the airbags punched them.

  Aron was concerned for her, his hand reaching for her.

  “You o…” but he got no further; the door was ripped open and the other driver, a stocky man, reached for Aron, wrenching him out of the car. The seatbelt stretched and twisted at his throat as Aron struggled with his assailant.

  “No.” Charlie yelled but the man would not let go. Charlie undid her own belt and lunged across, the airbags suffocating pillows. “No.” Charlie could hear the fear in her own voice and the man now giving up on the notion of freeing Aron from the car, pushing him down, punching him.

  “NO.” Charlie was scrabbling forwards, leaping from her seat as the belt snapped back, “NO.” Her voice was heavy as a door and as she spoke the door slammed forward into the attacker’s back, knocking the wind out of him. He staggered back, punching at the metal and plastic assailant, before turning his feet to Aron, his left leg kicking. Hard.

  “NO.” Charlie’s voice was like a sonic boom and the door slammed hard, closing out the driver. She reached for Aron, dragging him to her. His face was a bloody mess, but he smiled at her.

  “I’m good… I’m good…” A tooth dribbled out.

  * * *

  They were some time with the police before Charlie rang the insurance company and a courtesy car was sent, and they were some time longer before they finally rolled into the designated parking space at the marina complex.

  Charlie helped Aron into the lift and he kept his arm around her shoulders. As the lift door closed Charlie did not feel very strong any longer; something gave inside her like a deep breath and she was going to fall.

  “I’ve got you,” Aron whispered into her hair, his arms knotting around her waist, holding her close.

  * * *

  Once again, the pane of glass broke in the hothouse and so she awoke beside the snoring Aron with the tinny silver light of the marina winking in through the windows. It unnerved her, reminded her of something, and with a jolt it appeared in her head, the look in Michael Chance’s eyes. Not honeyed sugar.
Tinny, diesel sheen grey.

  These thoughts pushed her out of bed and she began to sneak about picking up her discarded things. Her other shoe must be in the living space. She tiptoed out through the sliding bedroom door.

  “Where you going?” Aron’s voice made her startle; she turned. He was standing naked, his hands on his hips. “It’s the middle of the night, Chaz.”

  “Home,” she replied. It was true.

  “How? You walking there?” He tried to look nonchalant, tugged at his nose as he sniffed. “It’s a long way back to your Mum’s.”

  “Cob Cottage. Remember?” Charlie turned the handle of the front door. Behind her she heard Aron reach for his jeans and tug them on.

  “Christ… you can’t… look, let me find my shoes…” He grabbed a trainer from behind the chair.

  “It’s alright. I need some air.”

  He pulled on the other trainer from in front of the TV.

  “Seriously Chaz… just wait until morning. We can go and have breakfast at the Boathook and I can run you back… or run you to the brewery…” She could tell from the way that he was concentrating on tying up his shoes that he was upset, on edge.

  “No. That’s alright.” She turned to the door again.

  “It’s just a couple more hours,” Aron said. “Come back to bed.”

  Charlie wanted to run. Fast. Far. She faced the door.

  “Scrambled eggs,” he said. “That weird sourdough toast you like. Big mug of Boathook special roast coffee.”

  Charlie couldn’t speak. She rested her head against the door. Aron stepped up behind her. He didn’t touch her, he leaned in close.

  “I get it,” he said, his voice soft and low and sounding so like Old Aron that it pained her even more. “I do.” He brushed her hair back off her shoulder. “You and yours… you’ve been through shit this year. Through hell. I get it.”