by Cari Thomas
Anna pressed on. ‘I have been practising magic recently and I fear there’s something wrong with it. It points to a sign—’
Nana leant forward and sniffed Anna. ‘HO! CURSED!’ She held up her spoon and banged it down onto the table. ‘CURSED SHE IS. CURSED. Cut to credits. Cut to credits.’ Her eyes were focused behind them, as if she were talking to an invisible director. She made cutting motions across her neck. ‘It’s why your mother came to me. About her curse. Just like this. Begging. Afraid. CUT TO CREDITS.’
Anna could see nothing but the snarling face of Nana, the words erupting from her mouth. It’s true. I’m cursed …
‘Come on, Anna, let’s go,’ said Attis. ‘She’s a nutter.’
Nana chanted:
‘Jack, be nimble,
Jack, be quick,
Jack, jump over
The candlestick.’
A Cheerio slid off Nana’s thin, hairy lip. ‘Why don’t you take her’ – she made eyes at Effie – ‘and go have a smooch in the alleyway? It’s what you really want, isn’t it? Is it?’
Attis snarled and then pounced across the table, his hands pulling Effie’s face towards him and then they were kissing – their mouths hungry for each other, his hands tearing off her shirt.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Effie. Anna blinked and saw Attis still sitting next to her, looking pale.
‘Oh, you’re going somewhere, Effie Fawkes, nowhere good. Fear drives you even now. I see it inside you like a mad clock. Will his arms be there to hold you? Or will they hold another?’ She smiled a black smile.
‘Just tell us what you know. Unless you truly know nothing at all.’ Effie jutted her chin out defiantly, but then her eyes went wide, her mouth slack. What are you showing her?
‘Now she’s getting clever. Bright and sharp as a mirror, ho!’ She looked back to Anna.
‘Do you know something?’ said Anna, hanging onto her questions like dinghies in an ever-expanding sea. ‘About this curse? Please.’
‘Curse. Not a fluffy word, is it? It’s endless, deep as the earth itself. A tiny prison. I know every curse that has ever been made, Everdell. I see them even now, drenching this world like black rain, nourishing the soils of our nightmares.’
Attis exhaled loudly. ‘This is pointless, Anna.’
‘You’re pointless. Your whole existence is pointless,’ Nana snarled at him. ‘But you know that already, don’t you?’ She smiled a terrible, pitying smile. Attis looked down at his hands.
‘Count out my change,’ she snapped at Anna, emptying her purse all over the table, copper and silver coins running everywhere. ‘Little piles, please, little piles. Orderly as soldiers.’
‘They say you know the Seven,’ said Effie, as Anna began to organize the coins. Anna didn’t recognize half of them; one was definitely a shilling and several were from foreign countries.
‘They say a lot, these people:
‘The more he saw the less he spoke,
The less he spoke the more he heard.
Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird?’
‘Are they dead? Are they going to come back?’ Effie pursued.
‘Protectresses of heaven. Nature in female form. Keepers of the languages. The good within us all.’ Nana cackled. ‘Oh, the Seven will be back. Too late now though, isn’t it? They’ve really messed up this time.’
‘What do you mean too late?’ Effie asked.
The coin Anna was holding burned suddenly into her flesh, leaving a brand there. She called out in pain. Attis reached out to her, but then it was gone, nothing there at all.
Nana turned to her, eyes feeding greedily on Anna’s fear. ‘We should all be afraid, for they are returning.’ Her voice was low and slow now, as if it were coming from somewhere else. ‘All of us. Witches. Women. Souls who question the way things are – free-thinkers, deep-thinkers, the cows who hoped to jump over the moon. All are at risk. Especially the cursed.’ She pointed a spindly finger. ‘Your red hair is enough to mark you out.’ She leant forward and grabbed a chunk of it. ‘If the dark days come again, shave it off, shave it all off.’
Anna felt a pure terror take over her soul.
‘Fear not, dear. You have the bone structure for baldness. Must be off.’
‘Wait. Who are returning? The Hunters? Why are the cursed at risk?’
Nana began to laugh, smacking her tongue against her lips. ‘You already know, Anna. A story. Just a small story. Small as a key. People think stories are harmless but they are the most dangerous weapon mankind has.’
‘What story?’
‘Ah! The usual kind. A prophecy. The Hunters have always loved a prophecy. Gives them a sense of purpose, a reason to shine their boots.’
‘What prophecy?’
But Nana had stood up from the table, scattering the piles of money Anna had sorted. She gave the waitress a ten-pound note from her pocket and left.
‘She’s crazy. Don’t bother,’ Attis shouted, but Anna followed her out onto the street.
‘Nana, what is my curse? I can’t get anywhere until I know that.’
‘How does the wolf know what its teeth are for?’
‘How is that meant to help me?’
‘If I help you, you won’t learn.’ Nana reached for her trolley. ‘Study your dreams, then, for they are free. Follow them to the edge of the woods and beyond, where your name isn’t Anna and curses croak like frogs.’
Anna grabbed the trolley with both hands as Effie and Attis came out of the café. ‘I’m not going anywhere until you help me.’
Nana smiled a jagged tear of a smile. ‘FINE.’ She threw her hands up in the air dramatically. ‘Three questions. You can have three questions for three truths, for truth is golden in these days of darkness. Soon all will be lies.’
Three questions hardly felt like enough but Anna took her chance before it was gone. ‘What is my curse?’
‘If I tell you now you’ll never escape it. I shall give you a riddle instead.’ She cleared her throat. ‘The truth is within the leaves. The mirror within the mirror. The mirror is the key.’
Anna repeated the words in her head. They made as much sense as everything else Nana had said. ‘How do I stop it?’
‘Curses take but a moment to cast and a lifetime to live out – most probably a short one. There are only two things in this world which can break a curse. The magic of the one who cast it in the first place, or a spell more powerful. Sadly there is little as powerful as a curse.’
‘Did my mother die because of the curse?’
‘Oh yes, oh yes, as you will too. Play with love and you’ll play with death.’ Nana cackled and her open mouth was an abyss. Anna was filled with a fear she could not escape from – how could she escape from what she didn’t know?
‘What does love have to do with anything?’
‘Oh, everything. All curses begin with love.’
Anna thought of Aunt’s hatred of all things love, her warnings, her sudden interest in Peter … Did their family curse begin with love?
Nana shuffled closer and whispered in her ear: ‘All you need you already have. Now let an old woman be.’ Anna saw Effie and Attis reflected in the shop window behind her. He was strangling Effie to death, as her father had strangled her mother.
Anna spun around, begging that the nightmare vision would be gone.
‘What is it?’ Attis said.
‘Nothing.’
She turned back around but Nana was already halfway down the street, people jumping out of the way of her trolley.
They walked away in stunned silence, Anna’s mind still lost in the dark tunnel of Nana’s eyes.
Attis began to chuckle, an unnaturally high sound compared to the deep river of his normal voice. ‘I hate people who say I told you so, so I’ll try and find a different way of putting it. I was right. The woman is bonkers. High-security institution bonkers. Curses and prophecies and riddles. Anyone can spout that kind of rubbish, Anna.’
‘S
he was powerful, you have to give her that,’ said Effie, glancing between them. She looked pale. ‘Those chimera visions she did – did she do them to you guys too?’
They rounded the corner onto the high street to be met by a battery of people. Anna dodged out of the way, thankful for the distraction – she didn’t want to answer Effie’s question. She didn’t want to have to describe what she’d seen. What did Effie see? Anna turned and found Effie’s eyes. They stared at each other in a moment of silent battle. They would never say. Anna remembered Effie and Attis’s bodies writhing as one, Attis’s hands around Effie’s neck – the kind of thoughts that did not go away.
‘She had a flair for the dramatics,’ Attis agreed grimly. ‘Anna, I hope you’re not actually considering the things she said.’
‘What? That I’m cursed? That there’s no hope? That I’m going to die?’
‘In a nutshell.’
‘The truth is within the leaves. The mirror within the mirror. The mirror is the key.’
‘That riddle will send you on a wild goose chase, probably a dangerous one. Now, there’s a great pizza place just inside the market, I suggest we drown our sorrows in melted cheese.’
‘I’m going back home. I need to clear my head,’ said Anna, beginning down the tube steps.
Attis grabbed her hand. ‘Don’t. If you go home now you’ll be worrying all night.’
There was a loud cough from behind them. ‘I’m going home too.’ Anna dropped his hand and turned to find Effie, arms folded, at the top of the stairs, blocking a trail of people trying to get past. Anna didn’t think she’d ever heard Effie say she was going home on a Friday night.
‘I want to re-emphasize: melted cheese,’ said Attis, but Anna was already halfway down, the splintered rumble of the train ahead bringing Nana’s laughter back into her head.
MAYPOLE
Contract Knot: To make an unbreakable oath.
Knot Spells, The Book of the Binders
‘“With an increasing number of what can only be described as ‘unnatural’ events, police have to start looking at whether these acts are somehow related. What ritual were the Faceless Women trying to enact that night so many months ago? Were their deaths intended to unleash some kind of dark force that is now spreading outwards across the capital?” Halden Kramer, Head of Communications for the Institute for Research into Organized and Ritual Violence.’
Anna dropped the paper she’d been reading aloud from down on the table where they were sitting in the common room.
‘Sounds like a nutjob to me,’ said Rowan. ‘I mean, what’s the Institute for Research into Organized and Ritual Violence? There’s a reason the police aren’t listening to them.’
‘But people are noticing.’ The Binders are noticing! ‘They’re one step away from calling the Faceless Women’ – Anna lowered her voice to a barely audible whisper – ‘witches.’
‘Actually a lot of people are already calling them witches.’ Rowan showed Anna her phone with all of the various comments in response to Kramer’s latest statement. ‘But an equally large number are claiming they’re aliens. These are nothing more than conspiracy theories.’
‘These are sensationalist sites and papers too,’ Effie rebuffed. ‘Not exactly serious news.’
Anna picked a fly out of her food with irritation. She was not in a good mood. Whether the threats had any credibility or were the ravings of lunatics, Aunt was still tense. Anna hadn’t come any closer to solving Nana’s riddle. And school was worse than ever. Anna had hoped that the rumours might abate over the break but they had merely stored themselves up and then unleashed themselves with renewed force, fuelled by fresh whispers. Flies were flying through the corridors, teeming at the windows; dying, rotting, multiplying; filling her mind like a dark fog. Pest control couldn’t locate the source of the problem and had recommended the school be temporarily closed. It was only Headmaster Connaughty’s stubbornness keeping it open.
‘What about the school rumours?’ Anna snapped. ‘They’re not going away either.’
‘Things are finally getting interesting, if that’s what you mean,’ said Effie.
‘Did you see what Darcey wrote about us yesterday?’ said Manda.
‘No.’
‘FLIES AND LIES. FLIES AND LIES. THE WHORE. THE NOBODY. THE VIRGIN. THE BEAST. THEY ARE BEHIND IT ALL!’ Effie recited with delight.
‘Everyone just thinks she’s jealous,’ said Rowan. ‘Which she is.’
‘Did you hear Corinne’s Yoga Club has been cancelled? She kept yelling at everyone.’ Manda laughed.
‘Is that a rumour?’ asked Anna. ‘Or true? If it’s true then don’t you see, we’re not dealing with rumours any more – they’re real.’
‘Good. Darcey and Headmaster Connaughty would be hilarious. Speaking of, what is this about Karim asking you out?’ Effie elbowed Manda playfully.
Manda blushed. ‘Maybe.’
‘One hundred per cent he has. They’re going for coffee,’ Rowan confirmed.
‘I’m just worried he’s still in love with his ex,’ said Manda. ‘The last picture of them online together was only three weeks ago and she commented on something he posted two days ago, which suggests they’re still in contact. I looked through her pictures – she’s really pretty and she looks nothing like me and they’ve known each other since they were young. I found a picture of them hanging out when they were, like, twelve. How can I compete with that?’
Rowan laughed. ‘Just how many pictures of her did you look through?’
‘All of them. I looked at all of them. I think I’m in love with him. Can we cast a spell to banish her away?’
‘I can look into something,’ said Effie.
‘No!’ said Anna. ‘We can’t just go around banishing people.’
‘It seems a bit harsh. Free will and all that,’ Rowan agreed.
Manda spluttered. ‘If I recall, a few days ago you wanted to cast an infatuation spell on trumpet-boy so he’d finally take notice of you. Free will didn’t seem so important to you then.’
‘Let’s do both.’ Effie gave Anna a challenging look.
Anna held Effie’s eyes. ‘We shouldn’t be doing anything to attract more attention right now.’
‘Anna preaching from her pulpit,’ said Effie, ‘but I’ve been told today that Peter has broken up with Darcey. You certainly had a hand in that.’
Anna went quiet, processing the news. Peter’s broken up with Darcey!
‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘Oh, you didn’t think our rumour spell would result in that? Really, Anna, you aren’t that naive.’
Anna’s momentary excitement fizzled to guilt. She’s right.
Manda raised her nose. ‘Yeah, Anna, you’ve had your wish, now let me have mine.’
‘Hey, me first,’ said Rowan.
‘Rowan, you don’t need magic—’
‘Girls, girls.’ Effie raised her voice above them. ‘Look at us bickering. We’ve finally got what we wanted: the Juicers’ power decapitated, the school falling at our feet, magic at our fingertips, and all we can do is argue. This is not the time to fall apart but to come together. It’s Beltane this Friday. May Day. The festival of new beginnings. Let’s celebrate with a coven initiation ceremony, bind ourselves together as one. Forever. It’ll be fun.’
‘Beltane is my favourite,’ said Rowan, bubbly again. ‘The whole family gets garlanded up and we sow seeds in the garden until sunrise. Mum gets tipsy on hawthorn brandy and then ends up tipping it everywhere. Apparently she’s “feeding the soil”.’
‘Initiation sounds painful. Will there be pain?’ asked Manda.
‘Only the pleasurable kind. Come on, it’s going to be the best night of your lives.’
Anna did not want to back down but she couldn’t risk any kind of magical exposure, not with Aunt so close to snapping. Their spell was out of control and she couldn’t shake off the worry that her own cursed magic might be at the root of it. ‘I’ll come as long as w
e do something about the rumour spell.’
Effie exhaled loudly.
‘Selene?’ said Anna. ‘I’ll talk to her. Tell her what’s going on and see what she thinks.’
‘Fine! Saturday morning you’re free to speak to Selene about whatever you want.’
Only once Effie had agreed did Anna allow herself to get excited by the thought of Friday. Anna secured permission from Aunt to stay at Effie’s while Manda convinced her mum too, claiming they needed to work on a school project. Selene had been happy to lie to Mrs Richards on their behalf. Nothing was standing in their way. It was exactly what the coven needed and, after her week of control sessions, it was exactly what Anna needed too.
On Friday, they headed for the roof. The sewing room was inhospitable – the altar was littered with flies, dead and alive and somewhere between the two; the plants were dried corpses and the smoothie cups overspilling with rancid liquid; the witch ball had burst, black sludge running over the broken glass. The horns of the skull were forming a twisted spiral …
‘We’ll deal with it later,’ said Effie.
Rowan had brought a collection of May flowers with her – hawthorn blossoms, cowslips, bluebells, daisies – and they sat in the fading light threading them through each other’s hair.
Rowan handed Anna a dark bottle of something. ‘I stole some of Mum’s hawthorn brandy. May Day gold right there.’
Anna tried it. It tasted sweet and succulent, dizzyingly rich.
Effie took a swig and raised an eyebrow. ‘I fully intend to go a-maying tonight.’
‘What’s a-maying?’ said Manda.
‘Traditionally it’s when all the boys and girls went off into the woods and fields and made sweet love to celebrate the season of fertility and welcome summer in,’ Rowan explained. ‘Whole villages at it like rabbits.’
‘That’s disgusting,’ said Manda, stifling a giggle.
‘It’s sex magic. Powerful stuff.’ Effie pulled a lewd face at Manda. ‘I’ve heard the Seven draw on it annually to replenish Britain’s magic.’
Rowan sang loudly: