Beltane

by Thea Hartsong

  Chapter 4. The lodge, and a meeting in the woods

  I spent the next few weeks in overalls accessorized with splashes of paint which also ended up on my hands, on my face, and occasionally in my hair. Rebekah jokingly called it my art therapy which wasn’t far from the truth since I loved every minute of it, and it made me feel useful. She’d got permission from our landlady Mrs Jenks for us to spruce up Rose Cottage a bit, and I was appointed interior decorator in chief.

  I began with my room of course gradually working my way through the cottage until I finally admitted defeat when faced with the prehistoric bathroom. There was really nothing outside complete demolition that would improve it.

  I used my weekends to get a workout on Audrey Brakes’s farm. Alongside exercising the horses I helped her by mucking out the stables, washing the stable yard, and even got to have a go at driving a tractor around the fields collecting hay from the meadow ready for the autumn, though I somehow managed to get it stuck in a ditch. I felt like a genuine country girl for the first time in my life. I looked like one too. I practically lived in Wellington boots.

  Most of my clothes had mud, horse hair and bits of hay on them, and the knees in my jeans were full of holes. Let me tell you there’s nothing like a bit of hard physical labor to help ease the mind and exhaust the body. I slept better at Rose Cottage that summer than I had in all the time since dad died.

  While I worked for Audrey she told me more about the New Forest’s traditions and way of life. The whole thing sounded positively medieval; they even had special courts set up and managed by people called Agisters to manage their own affairs.

  According to Audrey not a lot had changed since the forest was first enclosed by the Normans. When I tried to tease her by saying that felt a bit like they’d invented the whole thing for the tourists - I mean I’m American right, we love that kind of thing, ancient traditions blah,blah,blah - it didn’t work out as I’d planned. Unfortunately Audrey didn’t see the funny side at all. She sat me down on a hay bale and gave me a very polite, but very firm, talking to.

  Roots run deep here… people have been doing things the same way for generation after generation… nobody in the forest takes kindly to interference from outsiders in any of the old ways… this place is older than you can ever imagine or ever know – that was the main gist of it.

  Will somebody please explain to me what’s so great about doing the same thing again and again century after century? I’m pretty sure that the United States was built on the idea of breaking with traditions, doing things your own way rather than slavishly following what everybody else does. Not that I dared say that to Audrey of course.

  I think the only reason she kept me on after my gaffe, aside from my brilliant tractor driving of course, was down to my way with the horses. I’d never experienced anything like it at home in the U.S. Sure I learned to ride OK back in Brooklyn, but with the horses in Audrey’s stable it was almost as if I knew what they were thinking, and vice versa. I could make them do most anything I wanted without any effort at all. If a horse was upset or out of sorts I would whisper a few words to it and it would be right as rain.

  One evening when I was coming out of the tack room after work I heard a loud whinnying from the stables. Audrey’s favorite stallion Abacus was lying on his side in the straw suffering from a bad bout of colic probably because he’d been gorging himself on acorns again. His eyes were rolling and he was making a pitiful whickering sound as he thrashed from side to side. Before I knew what I was doing I was in his horse-box.

  Ducking under his heels as they swished down past my head I knelt on the straw next to him, and placed both my hands on his swollen sides. He lay still immediately though he continued whickering through the flecks of foam around his mouth.

  As I knelt there listening to his labored breathing, I can’t really explain it, I felt as if I could sense the obstruction, sense the undigested acorns which were causing him so much pain. My hands began to feel warm.

  I thought at first that I was just feeling the heat from Abacus’s sides then I eventually realized the heat was coming from me, through my hands. It was being channeled out of my body down my arms and into his stomach. Abacus gave a sudden loud snort, and then hauled himself up onto his feet.

  He stood looking down at me for a moment as if to say ‘what was all the fuss about? and then turned towards his hay bag ignoring me completely.

  “Well now,” Audrey’s ruddy face appeared at the door to the box, “it looks as if you might save me a pound or two in vet’s bills”

  I didn’t mention the incident to Rebekah when I got home as I didn’t want to worry her. It occurred to me later when I was in bed and trying to get to sleep that it was perfectly possible that I’d misread the whole thing. Perhaps Abacus wasn’t really that ill after all, he’d just been making a fuss over nothing and I’d imagined the rest of it.

  By the end of the summer I’d managed to save a pound or two of my own, thanks to Audrey, though I spent a fair bit in the Paper Mill buying up a few of the NG’s choicer items from the mythology section. Though I still wasn’t really sure what he was saying half the time we managed to pass some pleasant hours together chatting about books.

  During a conversation about the relative merits of Celtic versus Nordic legends I discovered his accent wasn’t from the New Forest at all, it was the neighboring county Dorset’s famous ‘burr.’

  September was fast approaching and with it the prospect of starting a new school. Rebekah had sorted an interview for me at the New Forest College which was a short bus ride away in the village of Brockbourne, and I had gotten accepted to study for A Levels in English Literature ,History and Psychology, and on a whim had also opted to do an AS level in Art – I’ve always enjoyed drawing, and I think I was still under the influence of the house painting!

  Audrey was disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to spend as much time on the farm through the autumn, but admitted that she’d been thinking of hiring a full time farm-hand at some point in any case. She’d just been putting it off while I was helping out.

  All the students at the college were between the ages of sixteen and eighteen so I’d be among my own age group again. While I was happy about that, I wasn’t looking forward to having to explain about my ‘condition.’ It was possible that I wouldn’t have to if my headzappers kept things on an even keel, though Rebekah did tell me that it might be best if my tutors or a close friend could spot the early signs of any potential ‘incident’.

  In my view Rebekah was being overly optimistic in thinking that I might have a close friend to tell. I’d never found it that easy to open up, let alone people I’d only just met.

  Enrollment went off without a hitch, and in spite of my worries about the social aspect of studying in a totally new environment I was quickly drawn into conversation by a couple of girls I recognized from my tutor group when I sat outside on the grass to eat my lunch.

  Millie had short brown spiky hair, the broadest grin I’ve ever seen and a mischievous sense of humor to go with it. Lucy was mixed-race with coffee colored skin, hazel eyes and a complicated weave that she said took over five hours to do.

  She introduced me to her gentle giant of a boyfriend Sim, who at six foot four towered over all of us, and who looked as if he might be able to lift all three of us above his head with one hand tied behind his back. He had a large nose and his ears stuck out like the handles on a mug, in spite of it all he still managed to be good looking.

  “He plays Rugby,” Lucy explained, “it’s like your American football.”

  Sim flexed a bicep stretching the material on his shirt sleeve close to bursting point, and then slapped the palm of his hand against his forehead.

  “Only we don’t wear all that sissy protective stuff!”

  Millie chuckled, “which is why you don’t have a single brain cell left to call your own, and you’re retaking your GCSEs for the second time in a row!”

/>   The words had hardly left her mouth when she was forced to duck under Sim’s arm and scrabble up the grassy bank as he launched himself to grab her. Lucy and I laughed companionably as Millie weaved her way across the lawn shrieking while Sim attempted to tackle her to the ground and tickle her senseless.

  I caught up with her again later that afternoon when she indicated I should sit next to her in Art class.

  Our art teacher, Miss Payne, was in her late twenties and looked a bit like she had stepped out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting, with her long flowing kaftan-like dress and her auburn hair hanging down in waves around her shoulders. Half the boys in the class were in love with her and the other half were pretending that they weren’t.

  She was really friendly and easygoing and managed to make the projects she was the setting for the term sound challenging and fun at the same time. In fact by the end of my first day I felt that all of the tutors the students I’d met had gone out of their way to make me feel at home.

  It was only when I stepped onto the bus that the atmosphere changed. As I walked down the aisle I recognized Goth-girl’s trademark sneer, and the blond curls of her handsome companion. They were sharing the earphones of an i-pod, and nodding their heads to music only they could hear. He was looking out of the window, unaware of my existence. Even so as I passed them Goth-girl slipped her arm through his quite obviously claiming her territory.

  I couldn’t swear to it, but I thought I heard her mutter under her breath something like “there goes the American psycho.”

  Even if I’d misheard I was sure whatever she’d said had been about me and hadn’t been a compliment. I thought about swinging round and giving her the edge of my tongue, or even getting hold of that dyed mop and seeing how firmly it was attached.

  However, as I squeezed myself into the backseat alongside Millie, Lucy and Sim, who was taking up two seats at once, I resolved not to rise to the bait. I didn’t want to be excluded from my new school the very first day.

  “Who are those two?” I nudged Lucy and pointed down the aisle. She squinted her eyes; apparently she doesn’t wear her glasses because she thinks they make her look like a geek.

  “That’s Jayne Carter, I went to primary school with her, she came to my birthday parties and everything until she hit puberty, then she started buying dolls in coffins, and moping around in her room listening to Slipknot records. Now she won’t even give me the time of day.

  I tried to make it sound casual, “and the guy?”

  “Bad boy heartthrob Jem Masterson? Yep, didn’t take you long to spot everybody’s secret little crush.

  Ouch!” Sim had dug her in the side with his elbow.

  “Sorry babe. Just being honest.” She leaned over, and gave him a compensatory kiss on the lips. Sim slipped an arm around her and kissed her back passionately. I watched for second until they began to chew on each other’s faces in earnest, then turned to Millie instead.

  “So tell me about him?”

  “What’s to tell? He’s gorgeous, but how should I put it? Troubled? One minute he can be nice as pie, the next he’s a complete jerk. Jayne got her claws into him a few weeks back when he was in one of his bad phases, and now they’re joined at the hip. Good luck to her say I.”

  Jayne must have figured she was being discussed because she turned around and stuck her tongue out. So what? I thought. Big deal. To my mind Jayne Cater and Jem Masterson weren’t important to my life, which just goes to show how wrong you can be.

  When I got back to Rose Cottage Rebekah wasn’t home so I decided to surprise her by cycling up and meeting her directly from work. I thought it might be nice for us to take a stroll up on the heathland near the Lodge, the private psychiatric hospital where she was working, before cooking dinner together.

  I’d wanted to take a look at the place ever since Rebekah described it to me the first evening she’d got back from her new job. I’d rescued a tatty old bicycle from the ramshackle garden shed, which provided a home to broken plant pots, some rusting tools, and about a million spiders so I took the opportunity to christen it.

  Despite the rubber on the tires being slightly perished I managed to inflate them both fairly successfully. I wheeled it out onto the road and launched myself into the saddle, peddling furiously as I tried to overcome inertia and get its heavy metal frame up the steep hill out of Baring.

  The Lodge was an imposing building on the outskirts of the village. If you’ve ever seen the film Edward Scissorhands you’ll know exactly what it looks like. I did my best to sketch it, but as you can probably see I couldn’t really do it justice.

  From the turrets, arches, gargoyles and battlements and the enormous gatehouse complete with a raised portcullis you’d imagine it’d been built in medieval times as a mighty defensive fortress to keep out ravening hoards of marauders. However, according to Rebekah, the whole thing was thrown up in the late nineteenth century, and had never seen so much as a skirmish.

  She thought it was ridiculously over the top, though it was the only building in the area big enough to house the clinic and the residential wards the patients needed.

  I wheeled my trusty bike up the gravel drive, the front tire was already flat as a pancake, and concealed it behind a hedge. Who I imagined was going to steal it I can’t guess.

  I managed to get through the security check at the gate after about ten minutes of arguing. They were very reluctant to believe who I was. It was only after Rebekah had been paged that they let me past their security post and into the building itself.

  Passing through a series of seemingly endless corridors I was shown into a brightly lit day-room by a male orderly who left me to see if he could track down Rebekah.

  There were a number of large comfortable-looking armchairs placed in semi-circles around the room. Only one or two patients remained as the majority of the day’s activities were over. One of them began to rock in his chair and moan before lifting a clenched fist and it banging on the arm.

  A female care assistant bustled over to me clucking like a mother hen to shoo me away, while another moved smoothly towards the agitated inmate.

  “You really shouldn’t be in here young lady. Come with me.” She said sternly ushering me back into the corridor, and then into a small cupboard-like room with a stained glass window dominated by a tea urn.

  “Are you are relative?”

  I explained about Rebekah, and her expression became slightly less forbidding.

  “Now my dear, you’ll have a cup of tea?” It wasn’t really a question, more of a statement. What is it about the British and their tea?

  “First visit to a psychiatric unit is it?” she asked, pulling a tea bag from a glass jar. I nodded, not bothering to mention my own brief stay in hospital when I was first diagnosed. She pressed a lever on the urn releasing a stream of hot water.

  “It can all be a bit of a shock, if you’re not used to it.”

  I agreed with that.

  “This building is fascinating though. You don’t happen to know anything about the person who built it do you?”

  The question seemed to have a strange effect. Turning and giving me a long penetrating look, as if I was trying to trick her in some way, the woman paused briefly before responding.

  “Are you asking me seriously?”

  “Yes, of course,” I replied.

  “You honestly don’t know who built this house?” she enquired, pressing further, the doubt clear in a sharp edge to her voice.

  I was baffled. “No,” I said, “I honestly don’t.”

  Something in my tone of voice seemed to convince her I was innocent of whatever it was she’d been concerned about. Lowering her voice in spite of the fact that we were the only two people in the room she leaned in towards me.

  “Does the name Sibyl Osgood mean anything to you?” she asked.

  I started. “As a matter of fact it does.”

  A hint of the former suspicion reappeared on the wom
an’s face so I blundered on.

  “I saw a gravestone with that name outside the churchyard… who was she?”

  The care assistant’s smile had a hint of smugness about it that I didn’t particularly like.

  “Well now, that depends on who you talk to. She was either a harmless eccentric or the most evil woman that ever lived.”

  I was momentarily nonplussed. “Which do you think she was?”

  The woman cast a quick glance over her shoulder at the door before she replied.

  “Neither one nor the other to my mind. She knew what she was about, that’s for certain. After all she made enough money at it. How else could she have built this monstrosity?”

  She gestured towards the window, clearly intending to encompass the whole building. As she did so I realized that the stained glass has an image on it - it was the same weird creature I’d seen on the sign for the Handmaid’s arms.

  “That woman set herself up as the world’s leading authority on black magic. The occult. It’s Baring’s everlasting misfortune she chose to base herself here.”

  She hesitated before continuing, “I know I shouldn’t say it, considering my job and all that, but the place has been a magnet for weirdoes and nut-jobs ever since. It’s no wonder they put a madhouse here.”

  Just then the male orderly nurse returned with Rebekah in tow, full of apologies for the fact that they hadn’t brought me straight to her office. She hurried me away from the care assistant, back through the corridors, past the security post, out of the front door, under the portcullis and into the grounds again.

  Once I’d recovered my bike we walked around the side of the building heading for the heathland which stretched away above the house.

  As we rounded the corner a large squarely-built psychiatric nurse with short cropped hair appeared pushing a wheelchair. He looked as though he would have done well as an Olympic shot-putter. He must have weighed in at around 220 pounds and most of it looked like pure muscle. His extreme size was emphasized further by the contrast between him and the emaciated man he was pushing in the chair.

  It was hard to say how old the man in the wheelchair was because his face and body were gray and haggard looking, almost as if he had been starved half to death and was on the point of shriveling away completely.

  As they got nearer to us the man in the chair began to become agitated, twitching and thrashing in the seat against the straps which held him in place.

  When they were only a few inches away he suddenly jerked out one of his stick-like arms towards me and clutched at my wrist, pulling me towards him.

  Gripping me with fingers like a vice he hissed two words in a croaking whisper, which as if it had come from vocal chords disused for a couple of decades

  “The blood!”

  He repeated the words again his eyes bulging with the effort as if his life depended on my understanding what he meant.

  “THE BLOOD!”

  Wrenching the man’s arm from mine, and forcing him back into the chair the huge male nurse barked at us in a strangely high- pitched voice with a guttural sounding foreign accent that we should move away, so that he could be deal with the patient more easily. Rebekah suddenly recovered herself. She’d been frozen to the spot since the first moment the man grabbed hold of me. Now she took control, ushering me onto the grass, and fussing over the red friction burn on my wrist.

  “He’s stronger than he looks,” I joked, partly to try to stop Rebekah from beating herself up for letting him get near me in the first place. I glanced back over my shoulder; the nurse was kneeling next to the chair pressing a hypodermic syringe into the still struggling patient’s arm.

  He quickly subsided, slumping back, slack-jawed, as the nurse heaved himself back up onto his feet.

  Rebekah kept on and on repeating that it was all her fault, and that she should have known to make sure we gave him a wide berth. I tried to calm her down, reassuring her as best I could, even though I felt fairly jittery about the whole thing myself.

  I finally managed to convince her not to worry about it anymore. There was no lasting harm done. He’d just given me a bit of a shock really. Even so, the incident put a dampener on the idea of a walk and instead we turned back down the driveway towards home.

  That night was the first time I had the dream; the dream that was to return to haunt me regularly.

  It was one of those horrible nightmares where you find you’re being chased. I was running along one of the endless corridors at the Lodge, and there was something nameless made of shadow behind me, following me. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there and that it wanted me.

  My breath came in shallow pants as I tried to gulp for air while I ran and ran. After what seemed like an eternity I finally came to a door. I turned the handle and pushed, only to find the door was jammed. It must open! It must!

  The shadow was getting nearer now. I felt a chill as the corridor became darker and darker with its approach, swallowing light. I pushed desperately at the door - suddenly it fell open and I stumbled through it.

  Slamming it behind me, and leaning my back against it to prevent it from being opened again, I found myself in a blank, empty room.

  Although there was nobody else there I knew somehow that I wasn’t alone. Panicking, I looked around the room again… there was nothing there…nothing at all. It was then that I felt a tingling sensation; the hairs on my neck had begun to rise. Slowly I looked up towards the ceiling…. and saw a huge eye staring down at me.

  Have you ever woken yourself up by screaming? I don’t recommend it. It’s not a pleasant experience.

  Rebekah came running in to me straight away, and I spent the rest of the night sleeping in her bed as if I was a baby. She said, as she stroked my hair, that she thought the upset during the day might have messed with my head a little, and that we should look at adjusting my headzapper dosage a tad.

  Although the nightmare was upsetting I gradually forgot about it as the weeks passed and I threw myself into my new life. I dedicated my time to my college work, and went for long rides on Abacus.

  Audrey had hired a new full time hand called Derek, though she was still happy for me to help out occasionally.

  I also discovered the wide range of amusements that country life can offer. Millie dragged me along to a couple of excruciatingly painful dances run by an organization called Young Farmers; I stood on the touchline of a Rugby pitch in the rain alongside Lucy while Sim tried to batter people into the mud; joined a yoga class in Ringburg village hall with Rebekah; took part in a quiz night in which practically every question required an encyclopedic knowledge of British pop music and sports, and became a member of the Handmaid’s Arms skittles team - it’s basically bowling.

  I also spent quite a bit of time exploring the forest, traipsing down the lanes and paths across its ever-changing landscape.

  I can’t tell you why the New Forest seemed like familiar territory to me, it just did. I had this strange sensation that there was a spot somewhere, a special place that I hadn’t stumbled across yet, which was out there waiting for me.

  During one of my early evening walks, collecting blackberries for dessert - mixed with apples from the garden under a crumble topping they were heavenly - I caught sight of something hidden away in the trees wondering if this might be what I was looking for I stepped off the path and pushed my way through the undergrowth towards it.

  Nestling in a bed of mosses, ferns, and grasses was an old caravan, its windows almost opaque with grime.

  A battered horsehair couch lay alongside it, next to a striped deckchair under a red beach umbrella. The door was hanging open, swinging slightly in the breeze and there was gentle tinkling coming from inside. I stepped a little closer and called out a tentative “Hello!”

  There was no reply. Letting my curiosity get the better of me I stepped up to the door and peered in. Inside was an incredibly cluttered Aladdin’s cave of hanging lanterns, wind chimes
, dream catchers, and colored glass.

  After calling out again and getting no reply I couldn’t resist a closer look, and, although I knew I shouldn’t, I crept through the doorway.

  In spite of its chaotic, messy appearance there was a wonderfully heady, rich smell inside the caravan like a hundred joss sticks mixed with the aroma of freshly baked bread, being carried on a ship full of Oriental spices.

  Instead of just taking a quick peek and leaving I became even more inquisitive. I had a sudden urge to open a large wooden cupboard above the tiny sink.

  As I opened the door a huge pair of yellow eyes stared out at me from the darkness. A loud hooting sound surprised me so much that I stepped back and tripped, knocking over a pile of books, and making a jangling clatter as I banged into half a dozen wind chimes. I trod on something soft.

  There was a sudden yowling noise, and a hissing mass of fangs and claws launched itself up my body towards my face. Staggering backwards I managed get my arm up to stop it, but not before a deep scratch was scored across my cheek.

  Trying desperately to get away I fell backwards over a tin bucket and landed outside the caravan flat on my back, and badly winded.

  Sensing victory the yowling creature launched itself from the steps to the caravan onto my chest scratching at my hands with its needle sharp claws. I did my best to scramble away on my backside or at least roll onto my front, but the creature had no intention of letting me escape that easily. The ordeal only ended when a voice called out.

  “Grimalkin!”

  As if the creature was obeying a command, the clawing stopped.

  Not willing to give up my defenses entirely I peeped through my bloodied hands at my rescuer.

  My first impression was that I’d been saved by a fortune teller from a booth in the State Fair.

  A woman of about fifty or so, holding a bunch of wildflowers, and wearing an outfit that wouldn’t have appeared out of place on a flamenco dancer stood looking down at me.

  Framed by brightly hennaed dreadlocks, a thin face concealed by sunglasses featuring circular purple-tinted lenses, and shocking cherry colored lipstick looked down at me. A pair of long dangling gold earrings, and a flowery headscarf fringed with gold coins rounded off the outfit.

  In spite of the hippie get up the woman looked extremely angry. I sat up fully, and looked around nervously to see what it was that could have attacked me so ferociously moments ago. Surely it couldn’t have been the fat ginger tomcat on the arm of the broken down settee licking its paws?

  “What you doing here? What do you want?” The woman was definitely annoyed.

  “Nothing, I’m sorry I was just curious.” My reply earned me a dry snort of laughter.

  “You know what that killed don’t you?”

  She stroked the cat pointedly. I held up my hands to show the scratches covering them as I felt a trickle of blood run down my cheek.

  “You should have some sort of warning sign. You can’t just let your animal attack people, what if I’d been a little kid?”

  The woman put one hand on her hip as she faced me. “This is private property. You’ve no business poking your nose into other people’s things.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” I blustered, “the door was open and I… ”

  The sentence hung in the air. I couldn’t really think how to excuse myself for going into the caravan. I decided not to bother trying, and shaking my head got to my feet.

  “Where do you think you’re going now?”

  The woman’s chin was tilted upwards slightly as she inspected me through her purple sunglasses.

  “Home, I guess.”

  “You can’t walk home bleeding all over yourself.” She turned back towards the caravan. “Come on, follow me.”

  Throwing aside a patchwork quilt the woman made a space for me to sit down on a narrow single bed which traversed the caravan. She bustled about next to the sink muttering away to herself under her breath before returning with a jam-jar containing a sticky yellow ointment.

  The paste felt cool and soothing on my scratches as she smeared it onto my hands and my sore cheek.

  “Still the hurt, mend the skin. We ask healing for your daughter,” she intoned quietly, holding my hands in her own.

  The cat, Grimalkin I assumed, hopped up onto the bed next to me. I shrank back slightly remembering the sharpness of those claws, but he rubbed against me and began purring, as if to apologize for his previous behavior.

  “Well I never!” The woman looked at the cat with a surprised expression on her face, “he doesn’t usually give anyone except me the time of day. You got any catnip in your pockets?”

  I shook my head as she crossed to the cupboard I’d been foolish enough to try to open earlier and reached inside.

  “I know you ran into Grimalkin, did Ozimandias say hello?” She withdrew her arm; on it, blinking in the daylight, was a plump tawny-colored owl. It considered me with an expression like a strict schoolteacher, and then began preening its wings with its beak.

  “I suppose I should introduce myself too,” the woman acknowledged, “my name’s Chantelle but most people call me Shanty.”

  “Thea,” I said, taking a look at the scratches on my hand before offering it for her to shake. The fierce red lines had already faded more than I would have imagined possible in such a short time.

  “Wow!” I exclaimed, “what was in that ointment?”

  Shanty wrinkled her nose. “Just a spot of Arnica, and a couple of other herbs.”

  I touched the back of my left hand with the tip of my finger; it wasn’t even tender any more.

  “You should market it wholesale, you’d make a fortune.” I flipped my hands over to compare the unbroken skin underneath, revealing the underside of my wrists.

  “What’s that?” Shanty was pointing at the brown pigmentation under my left arm.

  “Just a birthmark, dad always called it my life tree, see it looks kind of like a trunk and three branches?”

  “It looks like nothing of the sort!” Shanty said indignantly, you’d have thought I’d insulted her dress-sense or something from her reaction, it was seriously peculiar.

  “Well,” I said, taking my cue and standing up. “Guess I ought to be on my way. Thanks for the ointment, and sorry about the nosy parkering.”

  Shanty moved to block my exit. “Sit down!” She said firmly.

  I stood my ground until a low growl from the back of Grimalkin’s throat made me drop back again. That cat was seriously deranged and I didn’t want to provoke it if I didn’t have to.

  Crossing to a small chest of drawers next to the bed, Shanty reached in and pulled out a small rectangular package covered in black velvet. Peeling aside the wrapping she revealed a pack of tarot cards.

  The minute I laid eyes on her I’d guessed she was a fortune teller, and I was absurdly pleased my instincts had proved correct. Though if she thought she was going to get me to pay good money to hear a lot of bunkum about a tall dark stranger she’d be sorely disappointed.

  Indicating I should I join her at a tiny pull down table she pushed the cards across to me, told me to cut the pack in two, and to choose three cards.

  “I think I should tell you I don’t believe in all this stuff,” I said, as I pulled the cards from the shuffled pack one at a time and handed them back to her. “I don’t have any money anyway, so I can’t cross you palm with silver, or whatever it is you are meant to do.”

  Shanty tutted at me impatiently, and then devoted herself to studying the cards I’d chosen. After what seemed like an age she slowly nodded to herself, as if something she’d suspected had been confirmed. I was surprised she didn’t want to spin me some yarn, and at the same time relieved I didn’t have to pretend to be interested.

  Shanty took a necklace from around her own neck and slipped it over my head.

  “There,” she said with relief, “that’s much better.”

  I looked down at the
thin silver chain, and held up the amulet which was dangling from it. It was a small round piece of porcelain with circles of color on it. There was a ring of dark blue, then a ring of white, an inner circle of a lighter blue with a round black dot in its center.

  “It’s really pretty, what is it?” I asked, as I held it up to the light.

  “It’s a Nazar,” Shanty replied, “a Turkish amulet known for its protective qualities. It brings good fortune.”

  “Thanks,” I said, holding it out to her, “but I honestly haven’t got any money.”

  Shanty shook her head emphatically. “It’s a gift.”

  At that moment a great flapping noise filled the air and Ozimandias the owl launched himself off the shelf in the cupboard, landing with a thump on the bed right at my side. Shanty looked at the bird, then at me, and gave an involuntary wince.

  “What’s the matter? I asked.

  Shanty shrugged. “It’s peculiar to see one of my familiars so close to someone else.”

  “Familiars?” The word came out slightly more forcefully than I’d intended.

  “Aren’t they what witches have?”

  She peeled off her purple sunglasses and looked at me directly.

  “Of course they are. I am a witch.”