The Promise Witch

by Celine Kiernan

As the girl spoke, the pull of the castle dragged her slowly along the floor of the corridor. At the same time, Mup could feel the thread in her own heart trying to pull her in the opposite direction – back towards her body. She began to understand how this travelling thing worked. They were like two elastic bands, she and the girl, tied together and stretched between distances. The grey girl was being pulled towards the castle, Mup was being pulled towards the vardo. If I let go of her, she’ll just zip back to the castle. She’ll be safe – she’ll get better. And I’ll zip back into my own body and … and I’d have one less person to worry about.

  “You need to go home,” she whispered into the girl’s ear. “You’re getting sicker and sicker all the time, and I’m worried for you.”

  The girl scrabbled desperately at the walls, her fingers raising clouds of fog as she fought to return to the vardo. “Please do not make me go,” she gasped. “Children need me. I’m … helping them. I’m … helping…”

  Abruptly the girl went limp, and Mup realized that they were no longer being dragged towards the castle. They had stopped.

  The girl turned very dark in Mup’s arms.

  “Girl?” Mup shook her. “Girl?” Clouds of ash began to rise from the small, still figure. The huge eyes were closed. She seemed entirely unconscious.

  Mup tightened her grip as the tug on her heart began to pull the girl and herself back towards the vardo. Clouds rose in trails as they shot backwards – away from the castle, away from where the girl needed to be.

  “NO!” yelled Mup.

  She dug her heels in and they stopped.

  With considerable effort, she rose to her feet. The grey girl was nothing but a feather weight in her arms, now. Nothing but an ashy cloud. Mup leaned forwards against the pull on her heart. She forced herself to take one step, then another, away from the vardo. She could have been heading anywhere: there were no maps to guide her in this grey and featureless world, no network to open up. But Mup was determined to find a path. She would find the grey girl’s path. And she would bring the girl home.

  And suddenly she was plummeting downwards.

  The grey girl fell from her arms.

  All was darkness and cold, and Mup hit the ground with a thump and a rattle of dry bones.

  She lay breathless for a moment, her hand clenched tight over the tension in her heart. Then she pushed to her knees. “Girl?” she whispered, feeling about in the shifting debris of what she realized was the oubliette. Her ghostly form shed hardly any light down here, and nothing at all came of rubbing her fingertips together. “I really do not like being a ghost,” she muttered.

  Then – ah! – her hands closed on something colder and softer than the dryly rattling bones. There was a faint shimmer as her ghost-flesh met the girl’s. “Are you…?” Mup had been about to ask, “Are you alive?” but that wasn’t right at all. She gathered the girl to her, looked up to the dim coin of light above and launched painfully into the air.

  “Doctor Emberly! Doctor EMBERLY!”

  Mup squeezed up through the drain and out into a blast of sunshine. The grey girl hung in her arms like an ashy rag. Mup laboured up steps and into interior corridors, howling for help. Two members of Clann’n Cheoil came towards her, frowning and speaking tiredly to each other.

  Almost crying with relief, Mup held the girl out to them. “Help! Get the doctor!”

  The couple passed through her without even a moment’s hesitation.

  Mup gasped and froze. Her eyes and ears filled with living colours, with the rush of breathing, with the murmur of voices. Then the couple walked on.

  Mup gagged, breathless for a moment, then she straightened and howled, “DOCTOR EMBERLY! I NEED YOU!”

  Her voice died away in ghostly echoes, inaudible to the living ear.

  No one answered, and she stumbled on.

  Sunshine and laughter filtered through from a door ahead and Mup staggered towards it, not heeding where she was. She came into the classroom. The stained-glass windows splashed her with colour as she carried the girl through their reflections.

  “Dad!” she yelled. “DAD!”

  She could see him sitting outside, surrounded by older children. The children all had their hands pressed to the ground, and they and Dad were listening intently as Marty murmured to them.

  No one heard Mup, even though she was shouting at the top of her voice.

  No one saw her as she carried the girl towards the door.

  Marty slowly lifted his hand from the earth and a soft, bright bubble of water rose beneath his palm. The others, frowning in concentration, did the same. Brightness shivered beneath each hand as every child drew forth a gleam of moisture from the parched ground. There were shouts of triumph. Dad yelled something encouraging.

  Mup stumbled from the classroom and out into the garden. Overhead, a tracery of silver mist kept off the harsh sun. The air was blessedly cool. Green shoots were beginning to show in the flowerbeds. The trees had begun to push forth new leaves.

  Mup staggered through this newborn loveliness without anyone seeing her.

  At the far end of the garden, members of the clann were singing the mist into being. With them a choir of tiny children harmonized their own threads to the magic. Mup lurched towards them. The very small children were the ones to see her at last. At last, they heard her ghostly cries.

  The choir broke up in shrieks and screams.

  Do I look that terrible? Mup thought, shocked even through her misery at the violence of the children’s reactions. Then she caught sight of herself in one of the big windows and she could not blame the tiny children for their fear. She was hollow-eyed and dreadful: a shambling spectre, carrying something even more dreadful in her arms, and offering it to any who would take it. Goodness knows how her voice sounded to these very small people. Awful, probably. Awful, because Mup felt awful. She felt terrified and angry and despairing, and perhaps that’s how her voice made others feel too.

  Truly I am a ghost, she thought. Truly this is how a ghost must feel. Alone and desperate with no one to hear them except those that run away in fear.

  And then there was a kind face looking down into hers, and gentle hands prised the poor girl from her arms, and Mup croaked, “Help her, Doctor Emberly. Help her. I think she’s dying.” And Naomi took Mup in her ghostly embrace as Doctor Emberly lowered the grey girl to the flagstones, and Dad and Fírinne were calming the children, and Mup was able to stop for just one moment, because she was back with people who cared enough to pause, who cared enough to listen, who cared enough to look past their own fear and see a desperate child who needed their help.

  “Is she dead, Doctor Emberly? I mean, is she…? Is she…?”

  “I know what you mean, princess,” murmured Doctor Emberly, leaning over the grey girl’s dull figure. She was nothing but a shadow on the flagstones. Mup could barely make out her features. “Oh, you poor thing,” said the doctor. “You really have tried too hard, haven’t you?”

  To Mup’s astonishment, the grey girl’s eyes opened. She looked up into Doctor Emberly’s face. “Erassssmussss,” she breathed.

  “Yes, my dear friend. Yes. It is I.”

  The girl tried to rise. It was a painful, distressing movement. Mup’s eyes filled with tears just watching her. “Minion has the children. Must help. Must…”

  “Shhhh,” soothed Emberly. “Please don’t exert yourself any further.”

  Gasping, the girl clung to him. “Must help. Can’t leave them.”

  Emberly gently restrained her feeble struggles. “My dear friend, you are strong and you are brave. But look around you. Look…” He directed the girl’s attention to the ring of young and old now gathered about them. “These people are here to help. You no longer have to do battle alone.”

  The girl gazed in astonishment at the sympathetic faces. Gradually she subsided into Emberly’s arms. “They will … help?”

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes, still roaming in amazement from face to face,
drifted shut. She was fading fast.

  “She is almost out of time,” said Naomi.

  “We need to lay her with her bones,” Emberly told Mup. “But … does she even have bones? I’ve never been too sure of what the girl is. Did she ever have a body?”

  “Are you talking to Mup?” whispered Dad, hunkering down beside him. “Is she here?”

  “Hi, Dad,” whispered Mup. Dad didn’t hear her.

  Naomi helped Mup to sit. It was strange to look into the witch’s usually severe face and see nothing but undisguised concern. It was strange, and nice, to find herself lovingly supported by her. “We need to find this poor creature’s resting place, Mup. It is our only hope of saving her.”

  “She starts off in the oubliette. That’s what she told me. She always starts in the oubliette.”

  Naomi exchanged a glance with Doctor Emberly. “It is worth a try, Erasmus.”

  The doctor nodded. He went to rise. “I shall convey her there.”

  “Doctor,” said Mup, holding him in place. “Crow is hurt too.”

  “What do you mean, Crow is hurt? How is he hurt?”

  “What’s going on?” insisted Dad. “Tell me. Is Mup here?”

  “She is here, sir,” Naomi assured him. “I have her right here by my side.”

  “Is…” Dad made a gentle gesture in the air near Mup. “Is she all right?”

  “Her time as a ghost is taking its toll.”

  Mup gripped Emberly’s jacket. She could feel the pull on her heart growing stronger. Soon she would have to leave. “Crow’s mam hurt him, Doctor Emberly. I need you to come back with me. I need you to check if he’s OK.”

  Emberly looked desperately from Mup to the girl fading rapidly in his arms, obviously torn between them both.

  Naomi rose decisively to her feet. “I will take the grey girl.”

  “Oh, my dear, I cannot allow it. You know the girl’s history with the queen’s enforcers. The grey girl is not a child. She is a very powerful entity. Should she come to full strength and wake to find herself alone with you… Well, she could do you immense damage.”

  Naomi stooped and lifted the girl from his reluctant arms. “I will take care of this one,” she insisted. “You help the others.” She carried the girl away in a swirl of dark cloak, passing through the yielding wall of the castle as if she were a stone dropped into a well.

  Mup tugged Emberly’s hands to bring his attention back from where Naomi had disappeared. “Doctor, where is my mam?”

  “She… She and the raven guard are hunting for you, my dear. She received word that you were near Glas Gort, and she—”

  “We were!” cried Mup. “We’ve moved on now, though. We’re travelling over a big grass plain … we’re heading for mountains. “Oh!” she gasped, clutching her chest. “Oh… I don’t feel right.”

  The doctor gripped her hand. “You must return to your body now, dear. It’s not good for—”

  “I’m going to try leaving signs for them to follow,” she gasped. “Tell Dad! Quickly!”

  Doctor Emberly urgently repeated her message.

  Dad groaned in frustration and anguish. “But is she—?”

  The rest of his words were lost as Mup shot backwards through space, Doctor Emberly’s hand still gripped tightly within her own.

  A Royal Offer

  This must be what a ping-pong ball feels like, thought Mup, as she sped backwards through foggy corridors.

  Doctor Emberly trailed behind, his hands clamped firmly in hers, his ruffled collar flapping like a paper plate, his eyes wide, his mouth a perfect roundness of surprise.

  I must be careful not to land back in my body, thought Mup, or we both might end up trapped in Magda’s pendant. She shut her eyes. She concentrated very, very hard. I want to land on the roof, she thought. I want to land on the roof. I want…

  BANG! Rumble, rumble, rumble.

  They bumped, then rolled, then fell into hot, buffeting air.

  It was night-time again, the sky a vast umbrella of twinkling stars.

  Mup found herself gazing up at the underside of the vardo as she and Emberly tumbled towards the ground.

  “Quick!” she shouted, and they shot up and after the rapidly receding wagon.

  Emberly got there first. He grabbed the carved goods rack, and reached for Mup. For a moment they trailed hand in hand behind the vardo, like a faintly luminous flag, then Emberly flipped Mup onto the roof, and scrambled after her.

  “Oh, my!” he gasped. “That was exhilarating! I haven’t felt so alive since… Well, since I was alive!”

  But Mup’s attention was on the horizon. She went to the edge of the roof, staring at the mountains which now loomed, dark and ominous, on the far side of the vast grasslands.

  “We’re nearly there,” she whispered.

  Crow stuck his head above the porch. “Mup! Where have you been? Do you see what we’re heading for? Oh, hello, Doctor!” He scrambled up onto the roof. “Look, Mup!” He pointed to the distant mountains. “The queen’s there, isn’t she? I can feel it.”

  “Yes,” said Mup, still gazing at the mountains. “She’s there.”

  “My dear boy,” cried Doctor Emberly, obviously alarmed at Crow’s disembodied state. “Have I arrived too late? Please tell me you have not expired!”

  “What? Stop it, Doc!” Crow brushed Emberly’s attempted examination aside, and grabbed Mup. “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” whispered Mup, awed by the sheer darkness of what lay ahead.

  “But, my boy,” insisted Emberly. “Do you have any pain? If you close your eyes, can you tell me which parts of your living body might be injured? It’s terribly difficult to examine the incorporeal self, you see. One does so need the body…”

  “Doc!” snapped Crow. “I’m not what’s important right now!”

  “Not true,” breathed Emberly, dropping to his knees before the impatient boy. “Not true. We are all of us important. No matter what events are happening. No individual’s well-being should ever be overshadowed by the history that surrounds them.”

  Crow’s face softened at the doctor’s obvious concern. Before he could reply, the porch door slammed open below. They all shrank back as golden lamplight illuminated the striving horses. Magda’s weary voice rasped, “Take us down, my love.”

  The creature slapped the reins and gave a low whistle. The horses began to spiral down. Mup signalled silently to her companions, and sank through the roof into the vardo below.

  Magda was standing in the porch, staring at the mountains ahead. As the three friends drifted to the floor, the witch shut the door, blocking her from their sight.

  “Will she be able to see you if she comes in?” whispered Mup to Emberly.

  “Not unless I wish it.”

  “Are you sure? Magda’s very powerful.”

  “No point worrying over what we can’t control, my dear. Let’s just…” He bent over Crow’s bird-body lying in its drift of feathers at the bottom of the buckled cage.

  Crow looked away as the doctor prodded the raven’s curled foot. “That’s just too weird,” he muttered.

  “Can you feel anything?” asked Emberly.

  “A little tingle, that’s all.”

  Outside, Magda murmured. The vardo juddered as it touched the ground. Why is she stopping? wondered Mup anxiously. The queen’s path took us all the way to the mountains – why would Magda want to delay? “Hurry up, will you, Doctor?”

  “It’s just so difficult,” murmured Emberly, examining the limp bird through the bars of the cage, “when the spirit is no longer inside the body.” He looked sympathetically at Crow. “I don’t suppose I could prevail upon you to temporarily re-enter?”

  Crow’s cranky impatience dissolved. “I’m afraid,” he whispered. “What if it hurts?”

  “Oh, Crow,” said Mup. He allowed her to take his hand.

  I hate your mother, she thought. I hate her so much.

  “Just try for a moment
,” urged Emberly gently. “Just so I can ascertain…”

  Crow shut his eyes. There was a soft, whooshing noise, like the sound a candle might make if one could hear a candle snuff out, and Mup’s fingers closed on empty air. Crow had disappeared. The raven at the bottom of the cage stirred and croaked. It feebly moved its legs. Doctor Emberly bent over it.

  The door opened, startling them both. Magda swept in. She looked terrible – grim and sleepless and angry. She strode towards the table with no indication that she saw them, but still Mup and Emberly drew back. Crow was moving weakly, his beak opening and closing, his feet grasping empty air. When Magda saw this, her eyes widened and she snatched the cage, staring in through the bars. “You’re alive,” she hissed. “Thank grace.”

  She cares, thought Mup, startled at the tears in the witch’s eyes, astonished at the gentle way Magda placed the cage back on the table. She’s cared about him all along.

  But this foolish thought was shattered at Magda’s next words.

  “You’re not to die, do you hear me? I need to give you to the queen.” She slumped into the chair, and stared fretfully out the door at Crow’s creature. “A necromancer,” she muttered. “There’s no way she’ll reject me if I bring her a necromancer. And such a powerful one too.” She glared at her son. “Get better. Quickly. The queen’s moon will rise soon. She’ll be looking for me. I don’t want her to think you’re irredeemably broken.”

  “What a dreadful woman,” snapped Doctor Emberly. He stalked back to the table and leaned over the cage. “Can you hear me, dear boy? Just click your beak if anything hurts.” He began moving his shimmering fingers through the raven’s trembling body. “I’ll be as quick as I can,” he murmured. “Stay with me now…”

  Mup walked right up to Magda, and leaned down, staring into the woman’s pale, frowning face. “I don’t like you,” she whispered. “You’re cruel and you’re selfish and you’ve wasted everything good about your life.”

  Magda continued to stare right through her, her eyes restlessly roaming the glistening grasslands beyond the vardo door.

  “You’re all alone,” whispered Mup. “No one cares for you, because you’ve never given anyone a reason to care.”