The Promise Witch

by Celine Kiernan

  “Mam!” cried Mup, waving. “Mam!”

  The flock changed shape, wheeled about, and headed their way. Soon the air around the vardo was filled with sawing caws and darkened by the flutter of wings. Ravens settled on the porch rail and the roof. They clattered and clucked and filled the surrounding sky.

  “Better not poop on my woodwork,” grumbled Crow.

  A silver raven and a jet black raven swooped down into the porch.

  “Mam,” cried Mup again. “Fírinne!”

  Mam landed and rose in one fluid movement, and scooped her daughter into a fierce embrace. She smelled of ash and storm cloud and feathers. She hugged Mup tight, then looked her anxiously up and down. “You’re all right?” she said. Mup nodded. “Crow?” asked Mam. “You’re all right?”

  Crow muttered under his breath. “If you call having my brand new paintwork sanded off ‘all right’. If you call my vardo being crammed full of ravens ‘all right’. Then I suppose, yes, I’m all right.”

  Mam pushed Mup’s hair back off her face. Her hands came away fluffy with ash.

  “Grandma’s dead, Mam. Magda’s dead, too. They killed each other.”

  Naomi whispered bleakly from her corner of the porch, “They took the world with them.”

  “There has to be something we can do, Mam,” said Mup.

  “Do you know how far this destruction has spread?” Emberly asked Mam.

  Fírinne leaned against the porch rail, and grimly folded her arms. “We’ve been travelling through it for miles. It’s expanding at a tremendous rate, smothering everything it touches.”

  Mup looked in horror at Crow. Miles? He swallowed hard, unable to hide his shock.

  “They took the world,” muttered Naomi again. “They took the world. And I let them…”

  Emberly put his arm around his distraught friend. “What could you have done, my dear? We were all of us helpless in the face of their destructive selfishness.”

  “Let’s go home,” said Mam, softly. “Fírinne, lead the flock. I’ll stay in the vardo with the kids.”

  They travelled quickly through ashy fog, across miles and miles of smothered landscape.

  Mup wanted to fly down and press her hand to the ground, get some idea of just how far this deadening cloud had spread across their beautiful land. But Mam forbade her. So she spent the journey leaning over the porch rail, glaring keenly into the distance, looking for change.

  After a while, Mam flew up to join Fírinne and the raven guard. They were nearing castle lands now. She wanted to be careful of threat. Naomi stood with Emberly’s arm across her shoulders, her hands folded into her sleeves, her pale, young face ever more lost as the destruction rolled on and on.

  “I should have done something,” she said.

  “There was nothing to be done, my dear.”

  “There was, Erasmus. Maybe not just now, but earlier. Much earlier, when I was…”

  “When you were what?” said Mup. “When you were eight and your parents forced you to become a raggedy witch? When you were eleven and the queen was already punishing you for not obeying her orders? When you were—”

  “Yes!” interrupted Naomi desperately. “Yes. All those times. Every time I had a chance I should have done something. Over and over again, I should have done something. Instead of hesitating and hesitating until it was already too late!”

  Crow huffed. “All this from a ghost who won’t so much as conjure a pot of tea on a cold winter’s day.”

  Naomi pressed her hands hard into her eyes. She spun and stumbled through the wall, into the vardo and out of sight. Emberly gave Crow a disapproving grimace and floated after her.

  Crow shrugged. “I’m not wrong,” he said. “She talks about doing something but she still won’t use the magic she was born with.”

  “Naomi died saving us from the little grey girl, Crow. She’s not exactly done nothing.”

  “Maybe there wouldn’t have been a little grey girl if Naomi had acted sooner.”

  “Well…” said Mup. “I like her.”

  “So do I!” insisted Crow. “I’m just saying, maybe things would never have got this bad if people like her had done something sooner.”

  Mup couldn’t argue with that. She leaned on the porch rail, and watched the ravens flying ahead of them in the misty ash. Crow went back to driving the vardo.

  “I see green,” he said.

  Mup squinted. At first it was just unceasing greyness, but then, far off in the distance where the steady downfall of ash almost obscured the skeletal trees, Mup saw it too. A fleeting shred of colour through the foggy veil. As the distance lessened, Mup saw, clearer and clearer on the horizon, the bright green of healthy fields, the dance of green leaves on summer trees.

  The raven guard cawed, and took on speed. Crow urged the horses to pick up the pace.

  The fog thinned. The light brightened and they burst from the ash cloud. The ravens shed ash from their beating wings. The horses snorted ash from their nostrils and shook it from their manes. Ahead of them, the castle rose, strong and defiant, from green forest. Below them, graceful trees glowed under a benign sun.

  Mup nearly cried at the beauty of it all. In her absence, the land had been completely healed. All those people in and around the castle with whom Marty had shared the Marshlander knowledge, all those people working together with their many small magics – they’d done it! They’d rescued the forest from her grandmother’s terrible drought.

  The castle battlements were filled with people, all of them looking back at the ash cloud.

  The green banks of the river were lined with people, all staring in the same direction.

  Mup launched herself from the porch and flew up to stand on the vardo’s roof. Ash trailed behind them like a comet tail. They were already sixty yards or more from the ash cloud. It was shocking to look back and see just how impossibly huge it was. It filled the whole horizon, and it was still growing. Mup could see people running through the trees below her and along the forest paths. Some had nothing with them, some had bundles on their backs. They kept looking behind them and up at the sky. They were fleeing the cloud.

  She leapt over the edge and flew alongside. Crow was thrashing the reins now, urging more speed. “Get back in the vardo!” he yelled. “These horses run much faster than you can ever fly!”

  “I’m going down into the forest, Crow. I need to touch the ground!”

  “Wait till we get into the castle!”

  “No, I need to touch the earth. I want it to show me how big the cloud is!”

  “How big? You can see how big it is!”

  “I need to know how big it is all around, Crow. I need to know how fast it’s growing!”

  Crow shook his dusty head in exasperation.

  “Climb back in,” he sighed, “and stand with me,

  I’ll drive you down into the trees.”

  Mup clung to the outside of the vardo and Crow spiralled it downwards. The sun dazzled their eyes as they descended. A fresh breeze tugged their clothes. But by the time they neared the ground, the summer sky had hazed over. Greyness darkened the air. Ash drifted down to sprinkle the people’s upturned faces.

  The cloud was catching up.

  Crow landed the vardo on the forest side of the castle river.

  Mup leapt to the ground before they had even stopped moving.

  She pressed her hand to the fresh green earth.

  Show me, she thought.

  Most Things Live

  The pathways unfurled beneath Mup’s hand. Tears forced their way from under her eyelids and cut clean pathways down her ashy cheeks as the horrible truth made itself known.

  What lay out there was terrible.

  Terrible.

  The fresh green world was being eaten. All those brand new tender leaves, all that cheerful grass, all the joyful flowers and merry bumbling insects – the cloud was consuming them all. And it was huge. Huge and growing in every direction.

  Oh, Grandma. Oh, Ma
gda. What have you done?

  A hand rested lightly on Mup’s shoulder. She looked up into Crow’s ash-filthied face.

  “It’s eating the world, Crow.”

  Emberly and Naomi drifted from the vardo. Ravens spiralled down from the darkening sky. People came over the river, and emerged from the forest. They gathered together, ash falling on their heads and shoulders, and gazed down at the two children crouched on the green grass: the child and grandchild of those who had created this dreadful storm.

  “We can’t beat this,” whispered Mup.

  “We have to try,” said Crow.

  He was right. Of course he was right. Otherwise what was the point of being alive?

  So Mup pressed her hand onto the suffering earth and closed her eyes. Crow pressed his hand onto her shoulder and opened his mouth. His voice filled her ears. A song of bravery and of strength. A song of never giving up. It travelled from him to her, and Mup pushed it out into the world.

  Shadows fell across them. It was Mam and Fírinne. Dad and Marsinda ran up from a raft on the river. They pushed their way through the crowd to Mup’s side. Ash dusted their hair and coated their desperate faces. They said nothing, just linked arms. Mam placed a hand on Crow’s shoulder. Fírinne opened her mouth to sing, and Mup shut her eyes again, focusing everything on pushing their power out into the world.

  One after another, Mup felt people join the chain. Little flares of magic popped to life as people joined hands with their neighbour, or linked arms or hugged. She became the centre of a network of resistance as more and more people set their faces against the oncoming storm.

  Mup pushed their magic out and out.

  Still the ash rained down.

  Voices rose in a heartbreaking chorus of defiance.

  The trees shivered with power. The earth trembled with love.

  Still the ash rained down.

  At the edge of Mup’s consciousness she felt the cloud inch closer. The earth was growing dull. She could feel silence loom. Desperately she channelled power out and out. She pushed it out with all her might. The relentless ash fell. It piled, soft and cold, on Mup’s hands, on the back of her neck, on the top of her bowed head.

  The air grew darker.

  They weren’t going to win. They weren’t going to win.

  They were too small. It was too late. Mup gasped a sob.

  Someone said her name.

  Mup looked up. Her eyes were almost blinded with tears and narrowed with the strain of channelling so much power. Within her swimming vision, Naomi crouched. Glowing slightly in the deepening gloom, the witch’s young face was expressionless as ever. Her black eyes calm. Doctor Emberly was by her side, his cheeks gleaming with ghostly tears. Around them the air was full of music and the hiss of falling ash. The people sang on, their faces tilted to the looming cloud.

  Naomi rested her hand on Mup’s. “I’m going to try and help,” she said. “I hope I won’t hurt you.” She pressed down, and the world exploded in colour and light.

  Magda had said, “You and your flowers, you and your bumblebees.”

  The queen had said, “Are you ever going to live up to your potential?”

  Well, here was Naomi’s potential. Here it was in all its glory. An explosion of butterflies seething the air. Seeds bursting upwards into towering trees. Roots burrowing slyly in the slumbering earth. Rivers wearing mountains to handfuls of stone. Naomi trembled with all of this power. So gentle and so unstoppable that, for a moment, Mup could do nothing with it.

  Naomi opened her eyes. She pressed tenderly on Mup’s hand, as if to get her attention. “Send me out, Pathfinder. Stitcher of Worlds, make use of me. Add my magic to your network of magic and together we might save the world.”

  Mup gritted her teeth. She clenched her jaw. She squeezed her eyes tight and channelled Naomi’s power out into the world.

  It was like giving the earth back to itself. Like pushing and pushing at a locked door in a stuffy room until – SLAM – the door opens and the fresh air floods in. Power rippled from Mup’s hands. Not with a boom. Not with a blast. But with a sigh.

  Mup felt the earth heave.

  She felt it shudder.

  She felt it cast the ash from its hide like a horse shakes off dust.

  And everything was right again. A million little blades of grass tickled their way up into the air. A million little baby leaves unfurled their shining heads. A thousand buzzing bees, a thousand dancing gnats, a multitude of earthworms, ants, butterflies and ladybirds, crawled and fluttered, crept and slithered beneath the gentle sun.

  The gentlest summer rain began to fall.

  Everyone turned their faces to its caressing touch, and smiled as it washed them clean.

  Mup was hugged and kissed. Crow was snatched up and spun about.

  The clann began to sing. The Marshlanders began a hideous, happy dance.

  At one small lull in the celebrations, Mup looked across to see Emberly standing with his face to the rain, peaceful, but alone. She went to go to him, but Mam stopped her. “Let him be for just a minute,” she said. “He needs a little time.”

  Naomi was never seen again.

  Beneath the Gentle Willow

  “There’s nothing broken in the world that cannot be fixed, if people have the will to fix it. We need to work together, in all our differences. We need to walk together on all our many, varied paths. We need to listen in every language. We need to speak every truth. There will always be someone whispering that only they have the answer, that their way is the only right way. They will always be lying. Every path in life is distinct and valuable, every living being is equal and worthy of respect. You are precious. Your neighbours are precious. Your world is precious. That is the only truth. Let us live up to that.”

  The children’s eyes slid longingly to the garden beyond the stained-glass windows and they shifted restlessly in their seats. Doctor Emberly sighed, and stopped talking. They weren’t really listening to him. It was the last day of school. All his pupils really wanted was for their beloved teacher to set them free.

  At the back of the class, Mup smiled. Her eyes met Crow’s. He was leaning in the doorway, his arms crossed, waiting to say goodbye to the children. The last year and a bit had stretched his legs and sharpened his cheekbones and he was looking more like his dad every day. He’s getting tall, thought Mup in surprise. It was the first time she’d noticed it. Perhaps because she and him were growing at the same speed.

  Crow glowered at a particularly unruly child. “Listen to teacher!” he mouthed, and pointed the child’s attention back towards Doctor Emberly.

  The child straightened with military precision and turned to face the front.

  Mup chuckled. Crow took these kids and their futures very seriously. Especially the small, frowning, lost ones. Especially the ones who didn’t have many people to care for them. They flocked around him, these lost children, his little brood of grouchy chickens. Crow was determined to teach them that life could be good: that their future lay in their own hands. He taught them how to grow vegetables and sing. They called him “Mr Crow” and loved him beyond measure.

  They’re lucky to have him, thought Mup.

  Crow came and leaned against the bookshelves by her side.

  “Honestly,” he muttered with feigned disapproval.

  “These children’s heads are full of boulders.

  I don’t know why Erasmus bothers.”

  “They’re listening,” Mup assured him. “Even if they don’t realize it. One day they’ll remember everything he’s said. And even if they don’t…” She gazed across the restless, fidgeting youngsters to the gently exasperated ghost. Doctor Emberly’s words were lovely, and Mup had no doubt the children would remember them. But they learned from him every day in other ways. His kindness taught them to be kind. His gentle strength taught them to be strong. His goodness taught them to be good. Just like Mam and Dad, just like Crow and Mup herself, Emberly taught these children just by being himself.


  They’ll never forget him, thought Mup. And in the autumn they’ll come back, and he’ll teach them even more about themselves, and about magic. And Fírinne will do the same, and Mam… And Dad will teach them how to do art and how to build things. And maybe there’ll be more kids next year, and more the year after. And one day these kids will teach their own kids and things will just keep getting better, and stronger and…

  “Everything’s going to be all right,” whispered Crow.

  Whatever he had been thinking, his expression was now so wistful and hopeful that Mup almost hugged him. Yes, she thought. Yes, Crow. Everything’s going to be all right.

  “Well, I suppose I’d better let you all go,” sighed Doctor Emberly, and the class exploded into delighted chaos. There came the screech of pushed-back chairs. Birds and butterflies and small fluttering bats took to the air as the joyful pupils transformed into their animal of choice. Some flew through the garden door. Some scurried, bolted or ran for the courtyard where their parents or companions would be waiting. Some stayed, shyly gathering around Doctor Emberly’s desk.

  Mup smiled at this particular group. They were the youngest pupils, the gentlest, and she was waiting for one in particular.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” said Crow, as a group of scruffy children tugged impatiently at his sleeve.

  “See you at dinner, Crow? Mam’s cooking tonight.”

  “Do I ever miss dinner?”

  Mup grinned. “No, Crow. You never do.”

  She watched him herd his companions up the corridor ahead of him.

  One of the children said, “Can we help thee water thy plants before we go home, Mr Crow?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Can…” The child looked at the others. Nervous. “Can we visit during the summer and help?”

  Crow faltered. He had reached the top of the steps, and he and his wild-haired brood were silhouetted against the sunshine. There were no guards at the door now, and the courtyard beyond was full of laughter and activity. The children’s expressions were uncertain as they gazed up at Crow. Mup couldn’t see his face. He pushed the hair back from a particularly filthy forehead. Ran his thumb over a scar on a child’s eyebrow. “I guess I could use your help,” he said.