Waking the Witch (The Witch of Cheyne Heath Book 1)

by W. V. Fitz-Simon

  Gosha had hurt her mother’s feelings. Another first. Her mother never let her vulnerability show. Gosha wanted to curl herself up into a tiny ball of shame, desperately wishing she had never set foot in that bookshop. She wanted a mother who showed her feelings, but not like this.

  “I’m sorry, Mamusha. I had a seizure, and she was there. She didn't do anything.”

  “No, no, I understand. Any witch in a storm. She served you well without transgressing against my work. She is a clever woman. Who is she?”

  “Her name’s Rosamund. She owns a shop near Morel Market.”

  Her mother unraveled a handkerchief from the sleeve of her blouse and blew her nose with a loud honk.

  “I know of her. She does good work. You must introduce me. I would like to meet the woman my daughter chose over me.”

  She turned back to face Gosha. Her eyes hardened, and her top lip retracted in a smug sneer. Whatever guilt Gosha felt dissolved into an icy fury. Her mother was a snake, ready to dig her fangs in at any moment. Only one thing could protect Gosha from this woman: distance.

  “You are the most unbelievable piece of work, aren’t you!”

  She turned and headed for the stairs.

  “Boys,” she called as she made her way up. “Mummy’s here. Put your socks on, we’re leaving.”

  “What are you doing?” Her mother’s air of wicked superiority crumbled as she rushed up behind her. “It’s past their bedtime.”

  “We’re leaving, Mother. We’ll find a hotel.”

  “What about the hant? What about George? You’ll never get another witch to help you.”

  “Maybe I won’t. But I’ll be far away from you. Perhaps I can find someone else to help me who isn’t a conniving witch. Perhaps I’ll go back to George.”

  Her mother grabbed her arm to stop her before she opened the door to the spare bedroom.

  “You wouldn’t,” she spat in a hissed whisper. “No child of mine would be so weak.”

  “What do you care? You’re a cold, cold woman who deserves to be alone.” Her mother recoiled as if slapped. “He’s having an affair. He made me watch while he fucked his little trollop. Who knows what he might have done if I hadn’t fled?”

  She bore down on her mother, forcing her back down the stairs as the tiny box in which she locked all the things she couldn’t face thinking about burst open.

  “But you don’t care about anyone other than yourself and your awful witchcraft. You didn’t even care enough to save the life of the one man who loved you unconditionally. I told you my father was going to die. And you let it happen. You cast spells on me to stop me from warning him.”

  Her mother was crying now, real tears.

  “You think I wanted him to die? You think I wouldn’t have done everything in my power to keep him alive if I could have? I would have struck bargains with creatures so foul if you laid eyes on them once it would drive you mad. I would have given my life for his, but he didn’t want it.”

  She wrung her hands as if washing a stubborn stain from her skin.

  “When you were a little girl, after I saved him from the Communists and that monster came for you, I had to tell him everything. And he still loved me. He refused to leave us even knowing everything. But he made me promise him that when his time came, I would let him die without using any of my Craft to keep him alive. When you told me about the widow’s weeds, I prepared his favorite meal and sat in the kitchen and waited and did nothing, according to his wishes. And I let him die. Because I loved him.”

  She crumpled into a heap at the bottom of the stairs, weeping into the carpet.

  Gosha leaned against the banister to steady herself as the world shifted around her. She had stepped beyond the walls of reality into another universe. The day of her father’s death came to her unbidden, those terrible hours at the kitchen table as they waited, and Gosha also wept.

  “I’m sorry, Mamusha.” She clambered down next to her mother and wrapped her arms around her. “I miss him so much.”

  “I know, Goga.” Her mother, head buried in one arm, used the silly name she and her father would call her when she was only a little thing, before Gosha knew anything about the Communists, before the witch hunter took her and buried her in darkness.

  “You’re a good girl. And I am proud of you.” Her mother peered up from the sleeve of her cardigan. “Now you see how the world is. I’ve only ever wanted to keep you safe.”

  They hugged each other. The earthy fragrance of sandalwood filled Gosha’s nostrils.

  “Mummy,” came a tiny voice from above. “I thought I heard fighting. Are you okay?”

  Edmund stood at the top of the stairs, dressed in an oversized white t-shirt with Tom Jones on the front.

  “Yes, sweetie. Mummy and Babsha were just discussing something. Everything’s fine.” She made her way up to him and swept him up in her arms.

  “Let’s get you back into bed and I’ll give you a proper kiss goodnight.”

  “And a story?”

  “If you wish. Perhaps Babsha will tell us a story from when she was a girl.”

  She reached out for her mother’s hand.

  “Of course, my dearest.”

  Her mother kissed Edmund on the forehead as they padded back into the spare bedroom and tucked him into bed next to his sleeping brother.

  “I know many superb ones,” she whispered. “I will tell you a wonderful story about a poor, desperate girl held prisoner in a dark cave by an evil wizard, and the daring witch who saved her.”

  “Mamusha!”

  “What? It’s a good story. And little Edmund loves a good story, doesn’t he?”

  26

  The procedure to get rid of the hant was long and arduous, the most elaborate ritual she had ever seen her mother perform. Smaller procedures she’d write out for the visitors to her kitchen, but larger and more complicated rigmaroles her mother performed herself, often with Gosha in sullen attendance. It was the first time Gosha had ever been on the receiving end of her mother’s ministrations. She felt as out of her depth as any of her mother’s visitors.

  Mrs. Dearing sewed by hand a simple muslin shift from a bolt of fabric her mother kept in the cupboard under the stairs. While Mrs. Dearing worked away at the kitchen table, Gosha’s mother gave Gosha a wooden spoon and told her to stir a giant pot of stewed herbs on the stove. She remembered one or two of the strange roots and leaves that went in the pot from her time in her mother’s kitchen, but most were new to her. With each new ingredient, the concoction smelled more foul.

  Mrs. Dearing’s delicate needlework was not the only effort that went into the shift. Once she finished, Gosha’s mother gave her a bundle of herbs from the pantry, which she ignited with a snap of the fingers and whispered word that sounded Gaelic. With her hairbrush in one hand and the smoldering bundle in the other, she saturated the shift, suspended on a hanger from the kitchen door frame, with the smoke.

  Once her mother decided the preparations were adequate, she had Gosha strip and change into the shift before going out onto the patio.

  “Now.” Her mother handed her a box of short, thin candles, each with a strip of different colored foil wrapped around the base, and a disposable Bic lighter. “Take these and arrange them in a tight circle on the ground. They must go blue, gold, green and red, blue, gold, green and red, over and over until you have closed the circle. And you must light each one before you place the next.”

  The box was large and awkward to hold as she stood half naked in her bare feet on the stone patio. She stooped to place the box on the ground. Her mother and Mrs. Dearing leaped at her in alarm as if she had a baby in her arms and were about to let it slip.

  “No, no, no, no,” said her mother. “Don’t let it touch the ground. Stupid girl, you’ll ruin everything, and we’ll have to start again from nothing.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  The unfamiliar feeling of warmth Gosha was experiencing in her mother’s care dissipated into annoyance.


  Gosha followed the endless litany of instructions as best she could until her mother was satisfied. After the candles were lit and the box taken from her, Mrs. Dearing and her mother brought out the concoction from the stove and struggled to pour the huge vat of liquid over her. Water splashed over her and soaked every part of her until the flimsy shift clung to her body and turned transparent in its wetness. The liquid was frigid. When it hit her, it was all Gosha could do not to scream at the top of her lungs and wake everyone in a ten-house radius. She settled instead for foul-mouthed cursing. Her mother chuckled.

  “You see, Elsie.” Her mother elbowed Mrs. Dearing in the ribs. “She’s no wilting flower, my daughter. She has a touch of the sailor in her.”

  The two witches craned across the circle of burning candles and scrubbed her with their fingers from head to toe. Her mother muttered phrases in her secret language accompanied by Elsie, who chattered away in a strange Scottish brogue, until they reached her feet.

  “What do you think?” Her mother stepped back to inspect their handiwork.

  “An excellent job,” said Mrs. Dearing. “But we’ve stripped away the sigils. Will you reapply them afterwards?”

  “Oh no. She doesn’t need them anymore.”

  Elsie looked at her mother, unconvinced. “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, I am quite sure, Elsie. Only one path takes you to the clearing.”

  “As you say, Agnieszka, as you say.” Mrs. Dearing twittered in her best singsong as she turned back to the kitchen. “I’ll put on the kettle.”

  “Now.” The warm glow of the burning ring bathed Gosha’s mother in golden light. “Blow the candles out one by one. Start with all the gold ones, then the red, the green and the blue. In that order. Make a mistake and we must start the whole ritual again. Poor Elsie needs her sleep, or she gets a little loopy come teatime. Don’t force her to sew another shift for you.”

  Gosha did as she was told.

  “Don’t come in until you’re dry.” Her mother handed her a cup of Mrs. Dearing’s tea as Gosha stood shivering in the doorway. “I don’t want to clean that mess off my linoleum.”

  * * *

  “Your lips are turning blue!” said her mother when Gosha was dry enough to be allowed back into the house. “Silly girl for staying out in the cold. Put your clothes on and get warm. Borrow a sweater from my dresser. But not the purple one. It’s my favorite and you’ll stretch it out with your broad shoulders and long arms.”

  Gosha would have snapped at her mother if she hadn’t been so cold. Whatever progress they made with each other tonight would have gone down the drain with the foul liquid.

  “It is time for you to know how things are, my girl,” said her mother once Gosha returned, changed out of the shift, and sat at the kitchen table. “Whether or not you want it. Drink your tea.”

  Mrs. Dearing poured over an elaborate spread of cards she dealt out one at a time from a deck in one hand. Gosha recognized them as proper telling cards, like the ones her mother always kept in a plywood box on its own special shelf above the kitchen table. Each card in her mother’s deck was handmade from different paper, all cut to the same size. Each bore a different mixed media collage affixed to the surface with tape. Cut up photographs, fragments of pages from books, even pressed leaves and flowers made up the images. Her mother spent hours working on her deck, revising or discarding cards so it was rarely ever the same from reading to reading. Mrs. Dearing’s deck was also handmade, although each card was of the same card stock with the same design on the back. The images on each face were hand drawn in ink and painted with watercolors.

  “What’s all this,” Gosha asked.

  “Seeing as you gave us no information at all,” her mother cupped her hands around her mug of tea, “and Elsie is the most uncooperative spy you can imagine, we needed to fill in the empty spaces in your story. Elsie has dealt an excellent reading on your behalf. She is very gifted at it, much better than I.”

  Gosha had to blink and shake her head. Her mother would never have admitted someone was better than her at anything when Gosha was a child.

  “George’s father was the saint of the Emperor.” Gosha’s mother peered over Mrs. Dearing’s shoulder to inspect the spread as she sipped her tea. “You never told me this. I would have forbidden your marriage had I known. Except it wouldn’t have made a difference. You wouldn’t have listened to me.”

  “I didn’t know until after Edmund was born.”

  “It’s never too late for a good divorce. The Holy Church,” from her mother’s lips the words came out an insult, “may not believe in it, but I can think of many ways to end a marriage that would put fear up a priest's skirts.”

  She cackled and cut herself a slice of packaged cake from the glass stand in the middle of the table.

  “But I don’t understand,” said Gosha. “George’s father was a cold, miserable old man. He was no saint.”

  Mrs. Dearing looked up from her cards and raised an eyebrow at Gosha’s mother.

  “She was a willful girl who ran away from home before I could knock sense into her,” her mother protested.

  “Agnieszka doesn’t mean a religious saint.” Elsie reached out and patted the back of Gosha’s hand. “A saint is an oath-bearer, my dear, but special. He or she gives their oath directly to the supernatural Lords and Ladies themselves.”

  “None of that means anything to me,” said Gosha.

  “Oh, dear.” Mrs. Dearing looked up at Gosha’s mother. “How much do I need to tell?”

  “Everything,” said her mother. “The whole lot. But make it quick. We have to catch the bus in a few hours.”

  “She knows about Influence, though?”

  “Yes, yes. But not enough. There was a nasty experience with a witch hunter who came to the village when we still lived in Poland. Now this. Not much else.”

  “Oh, my. Well.” Mrs. Dearing spread her hands and placed them flat on the table, her eyes flickering across her cards as she gathered her thoughts. “There is Influence, and there are the Spheres. Influence is a natural phenomenon, no matter what anyone tries to tell you. What we use is no different from what the alchemists and mesmerists use. It’s always been there and always will be. It doesn’t come from the stars or the gods, as they would have you believe. It comes from people. Some more than others.”

  “Yes,” said her mother. “You’re doing very well. Keep going.”

  Elsie cleared up her spread and organized the cards into five neat piles, one for each of the suits and one for the trumps.

  “At first, Influence was wild and dangerous. This was long before recorded history. I imagine nothing of significance would have been possible until man tamed it.”

  “Man?” Gosha’s mother snorted. “Please. The first oath-bearer was a woman. And the second was a witch.”

  “Well, yes,” said Mrs. Dearing. “Quite. Once people tamed Influence, it settled down and became manageable. That’s when the Lords and Ladies appeared, emerging from the flow like Venus from the waters.”

  “Lords and Ladies,” said her mother. “So ridiculous. These men are so obsessed with status. Everything has to be royal and special. They can’t just let us get on with it.”

  “If Influence is a force of nature that comes from us,” Mrs. Dearing did her best to ignore her friend’s outburst, “the Lords and Ladies are our deepest needs and urges made real. They’re like gods.”

  “Except there are no gods,” said her mother. “Another fiction made to keep us from living our lives the way we want to live them.”

  “They’re like gods in that they have domains, areas of human endeavor over which they have power. The Spheres of Influence. Mr. Armitage’s father was the saint of the Emperor, the Lord of the Sphere of Authority.”

  She riffled through the pile of major arcana and selected a card, turning it to face Gosha. On it was drawn a man with a crown, orb, and scepter sitting on a throne, a winged beast curled around its base.

  “He
gained his power by somehow holding the Emperor’s attention and giving him an oath of fealty. That’s hard to do. I’m not familiar with Authority, but I imagine they have strict lines of succession like many of the Spheres. Each has its own way of doing things, but many of them observe similar conventions.” She picked up the card to look at it. “You say Mr. Armitage killed his father to assume the role of saint, but that’s impossible. Influence is a force of life, a force of vitality. Taking a life with your own hands would taint you. Oath-bearers must be very careful. At the very least, the Emperor would refuse to appear to him, at worst it would kill him.”

  “He had help. Emerson Margrave gave him a special bracelet he used to suck the life out of my friend Mick. Margrave said it tied up Robert’s power, allowing George to kill him.”

  “Sympathetic magic,” Mrs. Dearing said to Gosha’s mother, who winced at her use of the word. “Oh, don’t be such an old fuddy-duddy, Agnieszka. The Inquisition isn’t about to descend upon us. They have much better things to do. My dear.” She turned to Gosha. “May I see your wode sump?”

  Gosha took it out of her pocket and handed it to Mrs. Dearing, who dangled it from its chain, her hairbrush in her other hand.

  “This is a classic wode sump, designed to absorb free-flowing Influence. The bracelet he used would be more like a snare, trapping your friend’s essence within it. This absorbs anything directed at the wearer. The snare would be keyed to your poor friend and no one else. When the ritual was complete, the snare became a proxy for your friend. Any magic used against Mr. Armitage,” her mother winced again, “and any taint incurred by him from killing his father, would be transferred to the bracelet. The saint would have to have groomed your friend for a long time for him to have so much power. And your friend wasn’t an oath-bearer?”

  Gosha shook her head. “I don’t think so, but I have no way of knowing for sure.”

  “No, you don’t.” Her mother tutted. “If you’d taken your Betrayal you would.”

  Elsie drew cards from the five stacks and laid them out in a dense and complex arrangement of layers.