The Promise Witch

by Celine Kiernan

  Still floating, Mup curled her fingers around the edge of the parapet and listened. Crow’s song snaked around the vardo, weaving in and out, up and down. His words were unintelligible: Mup was not a hundred per cent certain that they even were words. Perhaps Crow was simply making sounds – allowing his heart to speak into the music without any constraint. Her eyes could not see the magic Crow’s song invoked, but her heart could feel it, and it was dark.

  Carefully, Mup reached across the parapet and pressed her palm to the flat of the roof. Show me, she thought.

  The caravan seethed in shadows. Its colours flickered on and off, on and off, colour and grey, colour and grey, as if the vardo was hopping between two places or hopping between two times – night and day, maybe, life and death, heaven and…

  Mup snatched her hand away.

  The roof garden snapped back into focus. The shadows retreated to their place.

  All except one.

  Crouched in the dark pool of shade beneath the vardo hunched a small, unhappy shape. Mup startled, as she realized the shape was a person. Then she frowned as she realized she knew who the person was. Angry, Mup crawled over the parapet. She waded through the seething magic that surrounded the vardo. She got down on her hands and knees in the fizzing torment of air and met the anguished eyes of the little grey girl.

  “What are you doing?” Mup hissed. “You’re to leave Crow alone, you hear me?”

  The ghost actually jumped. She shielded her face with her hands. She tried to crawl away. Mup’s anger melted. The poor creature was utterly confused.

  “I’m sorry,” said Mup. “For a minute I thought you were causing this. But you’re not, are you? It’s Crow.”

  Crow’s song, seeping down from the vardo above them, changed pitch and the poor ghost gasped. She shook her head. She covered her ears.

  “Crow!” yelled Mup, hammering her fist on the bottom of the vardo. “Crow, stop singing!”

  Silence crashed down around them. There came a series of startled noises from above.

  Mup reached in between the wheels and took the grey girl’s hand. “It’s OK,” she soothed. “He’s stopped.”

  Overhead, the vardo door banged open. Crow clattered down the steps.

  The little grey girl squinted around, as if only now aware of where she was. She moaned in disgust. She flung herself backwards, and Mup – still clinging to the girl’s hand – was dragged with her into the dark.

  There came a horrible, squashing, stretching feeling, as if Mup was made of jelly and someone was dragging her through a keyhole. For a brief, dreadful moment, bits of her got very narrow, bits of her got very wide and all of her was very uncomfortable. Then she was out the other side and zooming through air, still clutching tightly to the grey girl’s hand.

  “Stop!” she cried. “Stop!”

  They stumbled to a halt, staggering together in the dimness.

  Mup felt strange: there and not there, stretched like a bit of elastic.

  Then everything twanged back together and she felt surprisingly all right again.

  “Where are we?” She looked around. They were in an endless corridor of smooth walls and floor. Everything seemed to be made of mist. Far off, down at the very end of the corridor, a gentle light glowed. Overhead, the low ceiling was soft and drifting, like cloud. The floor flowed and rippled beneath Mup’s feet, like a river of fog. “Where are we?” she asked again.

  The grey girl was standing with her hands folded on her ashy chest, a look of relief on her face. At Mup’s repeated question, she smiled. “Home,” she breathed, in her raspy, unused voice.

  “Home? This … this is where you live now?”

  “Sleep,” murmured the girl, laying herself down into the fog.

  “Wait!” cried Mup. The little girl seemed to be blending with the floor. She was disappearing into the mist! “Wait! Don’t leave me! I don’t know where I am!”

  The girl roused herself, grouchily lifting her head from the flowing grey. “This is a sleeping place,” she insisted. “Why do you keep waking me? I am not…” She seemed to realize for the first time that she was talking to Mup. Her bright, black eyes shot wide in horror. “What are you doing here?” she rasped. “You’re not dead.”

  “Well, I should hope not!” said Mup.

  The girl rushed to her feet in a swirl of fog. “Stop that!” she cried.

  “Stop what?” Mup looked down at herself in alarm. Her body was a mass of shimmering gold. “Oh, goodness. I’m all shiny!” She held her hands to her face, and she could see right through them, as if she were made of glitter and honey. “How lovely!”

  “Not lovely!” growled the girl. “You’re alive. Alive persons are bad for the ghost place. Too shiny: hurting our eyes with glittering! Too noisy: waking us up with singing!”

  “It wasn’t me singing,” said Mup. “It was Crow. And let’s face it, I hadn’t much choice about coming to the … the ghost place. You dragged me here.”

  The grey girl growled again. She spun Mup on her heel. “Look!”

  A tunnel of mist opened at the command of the girl’s pointed finger.

  There were figures at the far end of it, moving frantically.

  “Listen!” rasped the girl.

  Voices came faintly through: panic-stricken, angry, afraid.

  “Who is that?” whispered Mup.

  The girl hissed urgently in her ear. “Tell the boy to stop rousing the dead!”

  “What?”

  The girl pushed Mup hard between her shoulder blades. The tunnel of fog opened like a rose, and Mup fell into it. She tumbled towards the voices, the words getting clearer as the distant figures moved against the light.

  “She’s dead! Mup’s dead!” Was that Crow?

  “How did this happen, boy?” Fírinne – shouting.

  “She was on the ground when I came out! She called me and I came out and there she was!”

  Naomi’s voice, paper-thin compared to the others. “She had been unwell in the courtyard.”

  “Why did you leave her alone, then?” yelled Fírinne.

  Mup tumbled and spun, and the figures came clear through the mist.

  Oh, look! she thought in surprise. There I am!

  And there she was indeed, lying on the ground as the others bent over her.

  I do look quite dead, she thought.

  Crow wrung his hands, his face wet with tears. “Save her, Fírinne!”

  A great shadow swooped over everything, and Mup knew Mam had just landed on the roof.

  But there was no more time for looking and listening because Mup was zooming down through colours. She was tumbling down through hot air. There was a brief, alarming close-up of her own face, slack and dead-looking, surrounded by the soft cloud of her hair: then BAM! she was heavier than clay: and SLAM! her heart was tripping like a hammer: and GASP! she was trying to suck in air.

  It all got very confusing then, and Mup’s concentration was entirely taken up with reminding her lungs how to breathe and reminding her heart how to beat, and everything else disappeared for quite a while.

  Something Wicked

  Voices wavered in and out.

  “She’s very ill…” Doctor Emberly.

  “What type of ill? Normal-type ill? Magic-type ill?” Dad.

  “Well … temporarily-dead type of ill, I think.”

  “Dead!”

  “Only temporarily dead … as far as I can tell.”

  “AS FAR AS YOU CAN TELL?”

  Mam’s voice broke gently in on Dad’s panic. “Daniel, let’s you, me and the doctor have this talk outside.”

  Crow came and sat on Mup’s bed, staring down at her with horribly wide eyes.

  Mup very much wanted to smile at him and say, Hey! I’m fine! But her brain didn’t seem wired up right and she just lay like a log against her pillows while tears flowed silently down her friend’s face and dripped off his chin. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  Oh, Crow, she t
hought. It’s OK!

  But Crow left without Mup being able to move so much as a muscle to comfort him. Not even Tipper’s cold wet nose or Badger’s snuffling kisses could get her mind and her body connected again. Everyone left, and she lay looking at the ceiling and listening to the curtains blow in the hot breeze, absolutely incapable of moving.

  This is terribly frustrating, she thought. Wait till I see that grey girl again. I’ll give her a piece of my mind.

  “You’re not dead,” rasped a familiar rusty voice at the end of the bed.

  Mup strained her eyes to see.

  The grey girl was glowering from over the footboard. “You’re not dead,” she rasped again.

  I know that! thought Mup.

  “Why do you not move?”

  I can’t!

  The grey girl came up the side of the bed.

  “Get up!” she growled and slapped Mup’s forehead.

  “OW!” Mup sat up with a jerk, her hands clapped to her head. “What did you do that for?”

  “Need to show you something.”

  “Oh, hey! I can move again!”

  “A bad thing is coming,” muttered the girl.

  Alarmed, Mup slipped from bed. “What bad thing? Where?”

  “A bad thing, from a bad time…” The girl dropped to her knees and began scrawling on the floor. “Minion…” she said. “Enforcer…”

  “You mean a raggedy witch? A raggedy witch is coming?” Mup knelt beside the girl, staring at her indecipherable squiggles. “I … I can’t tell what that is.”

  “I’ll take you,” muttered the girl, scrawling feverishly. “Show you…”

  “Can’t you just tell me?”

  Impatiently, the grey girl grabbed Mup’s hand. She slapped it palm first onto the ashy scribble on the floor. Suddenly they were inside Crow’s vardo, everything streaming grey. Crow was cooking and singing softly to himself, his home neat and lovely all around him.

  “Is this where the bad thing is?” whispered Mup.

  The grey girl grimaced. It seemed this was not where she had intended to bring Mup.

  “This is not important,” she growled. “Follow.” She began dragging Mup away.

  “Wait.” Mup twisted to keep Crow in sight. “Is this happening now?”

  Her friend continued singing as if they weren’t there. He was giving the tune no thought. It just came out of him, sad and sweet, the unconscious expression of his heart. As he sang, a shape began to form behind him. Mup could see that it was being gathered from the shadows of the vardo – called forth by Crow’s voice. Hunched and misshapen, it coalesced behind her unsuspecting friend.

  Mup yelled a warning. “Crow! Look out!”

  But Crow just kept singing, unaware of what his music was doing.

  The figure rose up behind him, its half formed features dreadful. It staggered, clumsy and unsure. “Whuh?” it gurgled. “Whaah?”

  “We have to help Crow!” cried Mup.

  “This is not IMPORTANT!” shouted the grey girl. She slapped Mup’s forehead again, and they were zooming through greyness.

  “You can’t keep doing that to me!” howled Mup.

  Down passageways they zoomed, and over water. Then – BAM – they were out in the open air, on the edge of a cliff.

  There was a woman there, her hair streaming out in the westerly wind. Her pale face was calm as she contemplated the sea, which stretched all the way to a distant horizon. Mup almost didn’t recognize her because of her clothes and expression. Then she realized it was Magda. It was Crow’s mother: looking comfortable and ordinary in trousers and cardigan; looking peaceful and content.

  “Bad,” growled the grey girl in Mup’s ear.

  “Yes, very bad…”

  Magda turned from them. She walked up a narrow path to a tiny house.

  The grey girl pushed Mup and they followed behind, floating like mist up the path, then passing like mist through the door that Magda had closed behind her. It was an ordinary kitchen, and Magda drifted around it doing ordinary things. She filled a kettle. She put on a radio. There were potted geraniums on the windowsills. There was a tiger-striped cat on a chair. Mup realized this was the mundane world. “Is this now?” she whispered. “Is this happening now?”

  The girl didn’t answer and Mup thought she maybe did not know.

  Magda hummed to herself as she pottered about.

  She’s singing the same tune as Crow, thought Mup. Are they singing at the same time? She shivered, again feeling the strength of Crow’s song. Even across this distance of time and space, it seemed to cast a powerful influence.

  Magda bent to her geraniums. Smiling, she pinched a dead leaf from an otherwise healthy stem. “Aren’t you pretty?” she murmured to the plant. “Aren’t you…”

  She stopped talking.

  She withdrew her hand.

  Mup could not understand the horror that passed across Magda’s face. Had she seen a slug?

  And, just like that, the plant collapsed into a pile of ash.

  “What … what’s happening?” whispered Mup.

  Magda released a strangled cry. She rushed to another pot plant. She cupped her hands around its scarlet blossoms. For a moment nothing happened. Her face filled with hope. Then the plant fell away in a puff of ash. Magda whirled around, her hands poised. She saw a book by the fireplace, resting on a colourful blanket. She ran to these things and grabbed them. They exploded into ash. She raced to the table. She snatched a yellow bowl. Cracks splintered its surface. It too fell away.

  Wide-eyed, Magda pressed her back to the wall. “But this is mine,” she whispered. “It’s mine.”

  A soft mewing froze her. The tiger-striped cat had jumped from its chair. Perhaps hoping to comfort its mistress, perhaps hoping for her to comfort it, it slunk across the floor, and flowed a purring figure of eight against Magda’s legs.

  Magda closed her eyes. “No,” she whispered. “No. Please.”

  But the purring stopped. When Magda looked down there was no more cat, just a soft drift of ashes coating the leather of her boots.

  “Oh, no!” yelled Mup in horror.

  Magda looked up sharply, as if hearing her.

  Mup and the grey girl shrank back as the witch locked eyes with Mup.

  “You promised me,” hissed Magda.

  Mup raised her hands as if to deny she’d ever made such a promise.

  Magda stalked vengefully forward. “You promised I’d be forgiven.”

  “I … I never…” stumbled Mup. “I never.”

  The grey girl’s fingers tightened on Mup’s shoulders as Magda loomed, but the woman stalked right through them. For a moment Mup’s vision was blinded and her breath stuttered by the witch’s dark passing, then she was out in the garden, watching as Magda stormed out of the front door of her little house.

  Magda slammed the door behind her with all the finality of goodbye. The house exploded into ash. Magda did not even flinch. The garden gate fell into ashes at the touch of her hand. All the fence posts which ringed her pretty garden puffed apart. Magda was already striding away. She did not look back as, one by one, her well-tended plants and flowers and fruit trees gave themselves up in gritty clouds to the tumultuous sky.

  Sailing high above, Mup and the grey girl followed Magda’s tall, spare figure as she strode across the landscape. Trees and bushes and unsuspecting little animals burst to ashes as she passed. On the horizon a border glittered. Beyond it a land, already suffering under its own curse, burned and sweltered under a cloudless sky. The witch stormed towards it, trailing darkness like a long grey cloak.

  “Where is she going?” whispered Mup, the answer already dreadfully clear.

  “Home,” whispered the grey girl.

  “I need to get back! I need to warn them!”

  The grey girl smacked her forehead and Mup bolted upright in bed, screaming for Mam.

  Family

  “We lock the castle down,” snarled Mam. “I want guards on every parapet.
I want ravens on every windowsill. Call back the men and women who are out hunting for my mother. Bring everyone inside the walls. Everyone.”

  Her guards snapped brisk salutes and rushed away.

  Dad closed the apartment door behind them, and Mam turned to Mup, who was huddled, all shivery, in a blanket on the sofa. Tipper and Badger lay at Mup’s feet. Crow lurked by the window, unhappy and fretful in his boy form. Mup kept trying to catch his eye but he wouldn’t look at her.

  “Tell me more about your vision, Mup,” said Mam, coming to kneel in front of her.

  “There’s nothing more to tell, Mam.”

  “Is that woman far away? Could she still be in the mundane world?”

  “I don’t know, Mam. I don’t think the grey girl understands time. She could have been showing me the past, the future or the present. All I know is she was showing me the truth.”

  Mup glanced again at Crow, thinking of the dark figure in his vardo. Past or future? she wondered. Was the creature something that might happen? Or was it already there?

  “Your hands are so cold, Mup,” said Mam.

  “Me and Badger is warming her feets,” piped Tipper from his position on the floor.

  Mup wiggled her toes against his furry belly so that he giggled. At the same time she gazed at Mam. “Will we have to fight Magda?”

  “Hopefully it won’t come to that.”

  “That damn woman,” muttered Fírinne. “Why would she come here?”

  As if in answer to this, every adult in the room turned to Crow. He shrank back against the curtains. Mup was certain he’d turn into a raven right there and then, and fly away. She was just about to point out that Crow had nothing to do with Magda, that she’d never wanted any contact with her son, when Fírinne surprised her by striding across the room. To Crow’s obvious alarm, the tall woman crouched, gripped his shoulder, and looked him fiercely in the eye.

  “Don’t worry, boy,” she said. “Whatever your mother’s intentions, we won’t let her near you.”

  Crow didn’t seem to know what to say. Eventually he managed an astonished little “thanks”.

  Fírinne slapped his arm in gruff sympathy, and turned to Mam. “What do we do about the school children?”