Slow Poison

by Helen Slavin

  “Are you going to work out the poison?” Emz asked. Charlie shook her head.

  “No. This is the antidote.” She was moving methodically, cutting more of this, less of that. “This is what I’ve been dreaming about. I’ve been letting my mind wander over the herb garden and not listening to myself.”

  Inside the cottage Anna worked at filling the containers with Cob Cottage water and within an hour they were turning in at the Drawbridge Brewery.

  Emz and Anna were roped in as assistants and as the copper heated the scent of the brew filled the brewhouse. It was a heady mix: as soon as one aroma entered your nose another was tickling at the back of your throat. Charlie was mixing and decocting the old matured Ferment with the new stuff. The scent intensified.

  “I feel really thirsty,” Anna confessed. Charlie stopped working for a moment and Emz offered her some water. Charlie watched her drink it. Anna’s face was pale again and she looked tired.

  “Here.” Charlie poured her a shot of Blackberry Ferment. Anna looked at the small glass.

  “I’ll stick with the water,” Anna said, but she looked at the glass with licked lips. Charlie pushed the glass forward.

  “Humour me as they say.” Charlie poured one for herself and one for Emz. The shot glasses chinked and with a look to each other the sisters knocked it back. It was rich and sharp. At once Anna felt her thirst and her fuzzy headed feeling dissipate. She looked at Charlie.

  “It’s like Mag…” Anna held back from the word.

  “Yes.” Charlie nodded. “That morning at Seren’s, I gave you the Blackberry Ferment to knock you out.” She looked at her sister.

  “It’s the antidote.” Anna looked at the last glimmer of purple in the bottom of the shot glass. The Blackberry Ferment was delicious in the extreme.

  “I think so. I gave some to Mr Hillman too after the wedding. It’s the eyes. He had funny eyes.”

  “What did you eat or drink at the Apple Day?” Emz asked. Anna thought back. She’d gone hungry most of the day, not had an appetite and then…

  “Pork.”

  Charlie looked uncertain. Anna held the thought. “With apple sauce. Drank some juice…” Anna’s mind replayed the day. “Which actually I thought must have been cider because I reacted to it.” It was so obvious from this angle.

  “Definitely the apples.” Charlie chimed in as she turned back to her brewing.

  “There was apple in everything, in every shape and form…” Emz said.

  “Cider at the Hillman wedding,” Charlie chimed in, and then with wide-eyed realisation “and on Apple Day Michael said he’d had an ‘apple tisane’.”

  “Mrs Fyfe poisoned the apples.”

  “Why? What would she have to gain from it?” Anna asked. Charlie gave a snorting laugh.

  “You missed the full-on Cromwell meets the Sausage Riot on Apple Day.” Charlie did not pause in her tasks. “She did it for a laugh maybe? An evil laugh? Who knows?”

  Emz was looking very thoughtful.

  “Power.”

  “Power?” Anna’s mind was troubled by memories of how she’d felt on Apple Day. The sensation was a dark shadow sitting inside her, too close.

  “She’s like Nan Withers,” Emz said, taking in a deep breath, “Remember?”

  And, just like that, like a plug pulling out, they did.

  * * *

  The day had been sunny, and the Way sisters had been spending the week with their grandmother. Their mother, during that particular summer, had been in the Arctic on a research and development project.

  Pike Lake looked like molten metal beneath the heat shimmer as they set off, Grandma Hettie carrying her red spotted handkerchief tied around a wedge of cheese slivered into slices, some tomatoes from the pint-sized Cob Cottage greenhouse, and a cottage loaf that Anna had baked this morning. It was high summer, and they had walked along the shore and into the shade of the trees, on through to the river, strolling by its rushing waters feeling the cool of it waft up through the forest of hogweed that towered even over Grandma Hettie.

  Their intention was to head up to Frog Pond to go swimming. They had been up there each day for the last three and although the walk was long the reward of cold, clear water at the end was worth it.

  On this day they did not reach the pond. Part way through the wood the air turned heavy and there was a metallic taste in the air.

  “Thunder?” Anna said. “A storm’s coming.” The sisters were watching their grandmother, her sudden alert stance and thoughtful, distant look. Anna recalled that at moments like this her grandmother resembled a gun dog.

  “Storm of sorts,” Grandma Hettie said. The girls understood that now was not the time for chit-chat and they waited, holding their breath. The metallic taste was worse, the crooked daylight, showing through the trees, darkened perceptibly and a breeze began to blow through the trunks, tugging at their clothes. Anna felt dread, sapping down through her body making her feel heavy. It was as though she could see her energy being drained into the ground. Emz was wiping hot tears from her face and making no sound as Charlie gave an angry shout, picked up a fallen branch.

  “Charlie…” Grandma Hettie turned, her hand offering a hank of the cottage loaf. “Here. Need to keep your strength up if you fancy a fight.” Charlie snatched at the bread, snaffling it down. Grandma touched Emz on the shoulder; Emz’s face was red with the effort of the stinging tears.

  “Here. Soak up the tears, sweetheart.” Emz nibbling the bread before Grandma Hettie turned to Anna. Anna sinking to the ground.

  “Anna, take it.” Anna’s arms felt heavy; she could not lift them any higher, it was only the soft scent of the loaf, wafting to her nostrils, carrying an idea of home, of her baking this morning, that made her reach, take it. It tasted delicious. She began to feel better. Emz stopped crying. Charlie did not let go of the branch, but she did not wield it.

  “Now, Charlie, you come up front with me and your branch.” Charlie stepped forward with energy. As she stepped forward the old woman stepped out of the trees.

  She was scrawny and thin, but her face was flushed. She smiled, a thin wide smile, and looked greedily at the girls.

  “Quite a crop you got there, Hettie Way,” she said, her voice breathless and high, the sound unpleasant. “Perks of being a Gamekeeper I imagine.”

  “On your way, Nan Withers.” Grandma Hettie’s voice, by contrast, was strong and familiar.

  “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m only passing through, only passing through.” She took a few doddery steps closer and sniffed at Charlie. Charlie flinched a little, but Grandma Hettie put her hand on her shoulder.

  “It’s alright, Charlie. Nan Withers is on her way.” The words were clipped-sounding and as Grandma Hettie spoke them Nan Withers gave what Emz could only remember as being a growl. Anna moved closer to Emz, put a hand on her shoulder. Nan Withers gave a disgruntled sigh.

  “Yes. That’s right. You Ways stick together. Yer big army,” she sneered and leaned in close, grabbing at Anna’s free arm. In the instant that she did so Anna was battered with images, of fighting, women weeping, of destruction, a wild storm of disaster threaded with the small and petty, resentment, jealousy, greed. As Anna thought she was going to fall into the nightmare Nan Withers pulled away, sharp. She looked at Anna and then at Grandma Hettie.

  “This ’un,” she pointed. Anna did not like the way the woman’s finger felt, jabbing into the air in front of her, but before she could react Emz had stuck her finger out, was pointing it at Nan Withers, her tear smudged face fixed and angry.

  “It’s rude to point,” and with that Nan Withers stumbled back. Grandma Hettie was smiling.

  “That ’un,” she said to Nan Withers and then, reaching her other hand onto Charlie’s shoulders, safe, secure, she said, “And this ’un ’an all.” Nan Withers made an outraged gasping noise.

  “Would you like us to see you on your Way?” Grandma Hettie said, her voice heavy with threat. Nan Withers, with a shuffle and a stum
ble and a curse word or two, made her own way out through Havoc Wood.

  “Change of plan,” Grandma Hettie said as Nan Withers vanished from their sight. They turned off at Thornwicket, making their way through a sea of frothing cow parsley to a tiny tumbledown house.

  Mrs Massey was the wrinkliest person that Emz had ever seen, her skin lined like a drawing, but her eyes were the sparkliest that Charlie had ever seen and as she wrenched open the door to greet them, her smile was the warmest and friendliest that Anna had ever seen.

  “I need to get the plane on that, smooth it. It’s been sticking in this heat,” she said by way of greeting. “Come in, I’ve got the tea brewed. We can sit in the garden.”

  They sat in the garden and refuelled with scones and jam and small sandwiches which Anna helped Mrs Massey to make from the remains of the cottage loaf. The warmth in her garden was just right and the girls lolled in the grass and dabbled their feet in the small pond by the wall as Grandma Hettie and Mrs Massey caught up on gossip.

  Later, as they walked home through a twilit Havoc Wood it was Emz who asked the question.

  “Who was that Nan Withers lady?”

  “Just a wanderer,” Grandma Hettie said. “She goes around, makes people feel bad so she can feel good.”

  The Way sisters took in this information. Charlie thought of one of the girls at school.

  “Like Jilly Watford?” Charlie thought that Nan Withers and Jilly Watford would get on very well together.

  “Yes. Exactly like. Some people are drains, they need the bad energy, the bad thoughts…” she hopped across the stepping stones at Trickle Brook. “Then, there are other people who just radiate, want to make people feel happy. Kind people.”

  “Like Mrs Massey,” Emz said, the sweet aftertaste of Mrs Massey’s strawberry jam lingering in her mouth, making her feel like skipping, so she did.

  She slipped, her foot skimming the stone’s edge so that she fell knee deep into Trickle Brook, her grandmother’s hand shooting out to save her from falling headfirst, but everyone laughed anyway.

  Their laughter rang out, pushed at the back of Nan Withers. Pushed her out of Havoc Wood.

  * * *

  The Witch Ways took in a simultaneous breath and felt energy bump into them. Charlie smiled.

  “Exactly. Like Nan Withers.”

  Anna thought of the nightmare images she’d been given that day and tallied them with the feeling of dread and sorrow she’d felt. Out of that negative there was a positive, a resolution.

  “She’s a drain.” Anna thought of the heavy sadness of her grief amplified by the poison.

  “She poisoned everyone and now she’s feeding off the negative energy,” Emz finished.

  “But we can put a stop to her.” Charlie waved her wooden spoon as though it was a wand.

  34

  The Crimson Ball

  “What do you think?” Charlie was staring into Lella’s eyes. They had a distinct and tinny glaze to them.

  “Why don’t you take a picture? It’ll last longer?” Lella was remarkably fighty for someone in Hello Kitty pyjamas. Anna watched her.

  “I think she could do with a shot.”

  “It’s that tinny look. Like diesel contact lenses,” Emz chipped in. “I think that’s what we’ve got to look for.”

  Charlie was pouring a shot from the rather cumbersome plastic flagon of Blackberry Ferment. As the liquid slipped into the tiny glass the light from the window caught in it. Even though it was rather grey and overcast the Ferment seemed to intensify the light and Lella stared at it.

  “Pretty.” She reached for it. Anna stopped Charlie handing it over.

  “Is this okay? I mean… should we be doing this?”

  Charlie and Emz looked at Anna.

  “It’s Magic. Poison magic. We’re here to police it. I think it’s more that we have to do it, it’s our job,” Charlie said.

  “We’re the Gamekeepers… remember?” Emz’s face was a frown. Anna nodded. Charlie offered Lella the glass and the shot vanished in a moment, Lella licking her lips in a rather fox-like manner, her teeth briefly stained blackberry pink. She held out the shot glass.

  “Hit me,” she demanded. Charlie poured another shot.

  “Her left eye is not as tinny looking…” Emz declared, leaning into Lella’s face. Lella’s fighty mood was visibly softening. Her face took on a slight blackberry pink tinge as if she was flushed from exertion and then the flush faded, and her eyes were filling with tears. Charlie handed over the second shot.

  “Bottoms up,” Charlie smiled. Lella drank the shot, her tongue licking at the glass.

  “Oh my god… that stuff is delicious.” She began to cry. “It tastes of summer and happiness and oh… I feel so tired.” The Way sisters made no attempt to conceal their observations of Lella’s face.

  “Yep. Her eyes are clear,” Anna confirmed, and the Way sisters exchanged a look. Lella was wilting a little.

  “I need a nap…” she yawned, and Anna helped her to the big saggy sofa in the guest lounge.

  The sisters cleared up the worst of the mess that had been made as they waited to check that Lella was, indeed, fine.

  “She’s snoring,” Emz said as the sound of Lella’s snores drifted towards them. “That should be a good sign?”

  The Way sisters’ hopes struggled under a high tide of fear and uncertainty. Charlie held up her crossed fingers.

  * * *

  Half an hour later and Anna had made a pot of tea and scrambled some eggs and Emz was in charge at the toaster. Lella joined them in the kitchen and was, to all intents and purposes, completely recovered.

  “That was one hell of a hangover,” was her only comment and the Way sisters did not elaborate further.

  There was one more experiment to conduct before they went public with the Ferment.

  * * *

  At the Drawbridge Brewery Michael Chance lived in the small cottage at the back end of the yard. The tiny garden backed onto the stream.

  Charlie had knocked on the door several times and there was no answer. She looked up at the windows, no sign of life.

  “You stay here, I’ll go and recce round the back, see if he’s there,” Charlie offered as Anna knocked on the door once more and Emz peered in through the side window. Charlie opened the small squeaky wooden gate and brushed her way past the overgrown clematis that was swamping the side lane. The earth smelt good in the shadow it created, cool and scented with rain and sap.

  Michael Chance was sprawled face down under a blanket on the wooden lounger. At first, Charlie wasn’t sure if he was even breathing. He seemed too still, and her heart was beating so hard she couldn’t hear anything else except for the insistent alarm call of a great tit. His skin looked too pale, almost grey, and his arm, draped down onto the floor, looked cold.

  “Michael?” Charlie whispered, not wanting to startle him. She could hear the shake in her voice. Was he breathing? She watched the blanket; it didn’t seem to rise and fall. She couldn’t remember whether the night had been chilly or not. Had he been here all night?

  “Michael?” Charlie’s heart was a V8 engine of anxiety now. She looked at the back of his head where his hair was matted with leaves and clots of dirt. What had he been doing? She was hoping that the third time would be the charm.

  “Michael?” At the sound of her voice his body rolled, his arm shot out, the muscles in his forearm tensing as his hand grasped her leg and pulled her down towards the blanket. As he did so Charlie was unbalanced and, as the blanket raised, and she saw he was naked, her mind ranged in two different directions, trying and failing to recover itself. His body folded around hers, his bad morning breath breathing at her as his hand smoothed over her shoulders, down across her hips to settle in the small of her back.

  “Charlie is my darling…” He was holding her too tight, his mouth at her neck, the words mixing with kisses that were sending electrical currents down through Charlie. “When are you going to work it out? Too late
when we’re dead.” His voice was mournful, the words cutting at her. “I want you, Charlie. No one else, but you look away.” For just a moment Charlie let Michael Chance’s hands roam across the surface of her, greedy and tender both. His hand clamped at her jaw and turned her face to his.

  “Charlie,” his mouth on hers, her fingers in his hair, feeling his breath, his chest move against hers, his heart, she could hear, pounding like a drum meant only for her to hear. She pulled away, Michael snatching at her as she reached for the plastic flagon and the shot glass from her pocket.

  “Drink,” she said, trying to wrestle an arm free. He grabbed, he clutched, and she let him. She wanted those handprints on her skin, even as the Ferment poured. He was looking directly into her eyes, his own tinny glazed and unsettling.

  “I don’t need one.” Michael rose up, the blanket falling back from his naked body. Charlie gave a gasp and swigged the Ferment as he took a step towards her, pulled her a step back towards him.

  “I need you.” As Michael’s mouth opened on hers she released the Ferment into his mouth, he swallowed and kissed her more hungrily. For a breath. Two. Three.

  He coughed and spluttered, and Charlie stepped away from him, reached for the blanket and wrapped him in it.

  “What? What the…?” Michael looked around at the garden, realised his lack of clothes and tugged the blanket tighter. “What the hell?” Charlie poured another shot.

  “Drink,” she commanded. He looked at the shot glass and a thought shadowed his face.

  “Hair of the dog that bit you. Drink it,” Charlie insisted. He looked at her, direct and ashamed. Charlie did not blink, stood strong as she watched the tinny glaze begin to drift from his eyes to be replaced with their familiar honeyed sugar brown. She offered the shot glass more urgently, pushing it at his chest so that a little tear or two of it spilled down the blanket. Michael looked at the glass for a second and then drank it as if it might be poison.