by B G Denvil
He had waved to us when we arrived, so clearly he knew we were there. We’d decided to wait until he fell over drunk, and then cart him back to the Rookery. We’d probably have to pay for everything he’d drunk too, since I couldn’t see how he could possibly have any English coinage.
Instead, we tried to get Fanny’s memory working. “Let’s start with anyone and everyone all the witches and wizards you ever knew?” I sighed, a bit tired.
Fanny screwed up her face with the pain of thinking.
“My dad. He wasn’t strong; he was strict, but loving. And he certainly didn’t deserve to be killed like that. Then there was Aunty Amy. She was nice too, but she died a few years before my father. Not a curse, though. She was sick for some time. I hadn’t seen her for ages because my father was frightened she’d give us some of her pox. She had that terrible smallpox sickness, and my father tried to magic it away, but he wasn’t strong enough. She tried to magic it away herself, but she was too sick to do it. So frustrating. I was just little, and so was her little boy. That’s my cousin Dominic. We used to play together all the time. He was sweet. But I haven’t seen him for ages. He went away with his human father after his mother died. I hope he’s happy and well somewhere.”
“I don’t think it’s likely to be a family member,” said Peg. “Someone you met who hated both your father and you is more likely.”
“Not all family members are nice,” I said, thinking of Alice.
Edna guessed my thoughts. “Alice wasn’t your real mother,” she pointed out.
We carried on talking, and thinking – and drinking, of course, but quite suddenly Angdar started getting obstreperous. We could hear him, although the tavern was now so full it was hard to see him. There were only three tables, and ours was small, so everyone else was standing. So Butterfield, getting nervous, stood and walked in the direction of his voice.
“There’s sea serpents out there,” he was shouting, “and I still braved the seas. To east, to west, to north and the south, I have battled my way into the great world beyond my narrow shores.”
It was Rollo, a sort of friend of mine, I could hear answering him. “I’ve never left our beaches,” I heard him say. “You’re a mighty brave man, Master Angdar.”
And our strange new Norseman answering, “Guided by the stars and the moon, the sun and the winds, there’s nothing in the wide world I haven’t seen. The country of the west where men dance before they fight, and wear feathers on their heads. There’s another in the north we’ve called Greenland, since that’s what it is, and we’ve sat there in the sunshine until Odin called us home. You have islands too, off the northern cliffs, peopled by Celts and sheep, and we built homes there and no doubt some of us live there still.”
I peeped between the waving arms and clapping hands, and saw Butterfield stride up to our Viking.
“Time for home,” she said gently. “Aren’t you hungry, my friend?”
Evidently, he had forgotten all about food, and had so thoroughly enjoyed himself, he couldn’t stop telling us all about it. We had to walk, of course. Unless this new ghost disappeared or became another squirrel, we would eventually have to tell him about us and what made us different to most boring humans. But for the moment, we didn’t want to risk it. Besides, from the initial experience we decided that Angdar wouldn’t keep his mouth shut.
We trooped back to the Rookery and sat Angdar down in the dining room. Issa very sweetly summoned up some left-over food, or at least, that’s what she claimed it was, and we all helped ourselves. It was principally for Angdar, but none of us could resist nibbling.
He loved the bedchamber we gave him; he had never seen such a grand and comfy bed before. Even as the chief, he had only ever slept on a straw mattress tucked away behind a door, no windows, as dark inside as a wine barrel and about as small too. Now he leapt around, inched his head downwards to peak through the little window, smeared his grubby finger over the glass in wonder, to prove it was actually real, bounced on the bed and looked under the blankets to see if it was a genuine mattress, stared in the mirror at himself, grinning to split his face, flung himself onto the floor to examine the rug, and finally collapsed on the stool, hands clasped behind his head as he wore a smile of such blissful joy, it was impossible not to smile back.
Butterfield had stored his weapons and shield in a box under the bed, and we told him he mustn’t use them until – if – he ever left,
Angdar shrugged. “No boat, lady.”
We left him eventually, though he didn’t seem eager for either sleep or contemplation, but we all sidled off, since we all wanted our beds. Indeed, we had barely shut the door when we heard him snoring. He might have been reluctant, but a hundred cups of strong ale would usually help those dreams along. I wondered if he’d still be around in the morning.
“It’s just so odd,” I mumbled. “Whistle can’t materialise easily, and yet this man with no magic powers whatsoever, who died hundreds of years ago, pops back as if reborn.”
“He is reborn,” insisted Butterfield. “And there has to be a reason. Not our magic, nor the sort of magic we can use and understand. This is another sort of magic altogether.”
“Just like Fanny’s curse,” I sighed.
I woke early the following morning, just as the first peeping reflections of the rising sun spanned the horizon, one white line dividing black from black. I quietly opened my door to the dawn and breathed in that first daylit freshness. I immediately came face to back with Angdar.
He was standing on the grass, gazing out towards the trees. Stretching his arms, and gulping in the new warmth, he was some sort of godlike creature himself. I cleared my throat, and he turned quickly, still wearing that same huge smile.
I felt like demanding why on earth he didn’t have a raging hangover, but didn’t bother. Then I saw Butterfield peering down from her window, and when I turned back again, I almost bumped into Edna.
“Everyone except Peg,” I said.
“Oh, she’s been up for ages,” Edna corrected me. “She’s just gone into the kitchen to see if Issa is starting breakfast.”
“I shall be exhausted before midnight,” I said. Everyone else just shook their heads, since they knew perfectly well I hadn’t gone to bed before midnight since I’d turned eight.
But Fanny wasn’t up, and she was the one I needed to speak with, so I flew up to her bedchamber window, and found her wide-awake sitting on her bed, her chin cupped in her hands.
“So you haven’t remembered anymore magical friends?” I asked her. “Or rather – enemies.”
“Neither.” She looked up and shook her head. “But I never met my mother, although Aunty Amy was her sister, and told me some things about her when I was very titchy. I’ve no idea about her magical grade, or my cousin’s, because he was too little and hadn’t done his ten-year test. And his dad, being human, went off to live with humans and that was it. Contact over.”
I was flummoxed. So I said the only thing I could think of. “You have one solitary relative left in all the world in your nice little cousin. So that’s who we’ll visit, if we can find him. Any ideas?”
Again, she shook her head. “I don’t suppose it will be London or anything terrifying like that. Uncle Joseph wouldn’t ever go that far. He was sweet, but simple, and after Aunty Amy died, my dad said he was scared of everything and wanted no more to do with us wiccan folk.”
She looked a bit tearful so I told her I would go and sit in the sunshine and try and bring up a trail, to see if I could find their whereabouts in my mind. Not usually so easy with humans and weak magical grades. But I wanted to try.
After I’d left Fanny’s room, I immediately heard her burst into tears so I hurried out of earshot.
Whistle was waiting for me on my windowsill, so we sat and talked. “Come on,” I said, taking all that sweet soft cuddly hair onto my lap. “Have you discovered anymore?”
“In a way,” said Whistle, enjoying obscurity as always. “I have at least
been able to trace the direction from which those two poisoned darts were sent. I need you to remember that I am speaking of the original direction from which they came. The perpetrator could have moved since.”
I resisted the urge to tell him to get on with it. Instead I asked, most politely, “How long ago can you trace it back to?”
“Your rescued child,” said the squirrel, “says the curse and the death of her father came around one year ago. As I am sure you are aware, we are now in mid-September. I cannot be sure, since it is entirely irrelevant to squirrels, but I believe it is actually the twenty-first of September today. I have been able to go back to the twenty-first of this month last year, and then trace forwards day by day. If I have the right trail to follow, then I can tell you that the original curse was thundered into Copplestone on Hill on the fifth of October last year. And if that is the correct one, it most certainly came from Grodpop Under Lea, a large village further south in Dorset. And I saw one trembling finger, pointing. That finger sent the worst type of curse it could discover. Definitely strong magic, but not tutored. Pathetically uncontrolled and severely hampered by ignorance.”
I had listened patiently, and now I hopped up.
“Right,” I said. “I’m off to Dorset.”
Five
I told Fanny, and she was both delighted and scared. She was also once more wearing tear stains. I almost asked her if she’d always cried a lot, but I decided it was better not to. It might have made her cry, though I really shouldn’t have felt that way. She had been through so much for someone so young.
“So,” I asked, “do you know anyone in Grodpop Under Lea? Have you ever been there? Where your father was born, for instance?”
“Definitely not,” she said, “I’ve never even heard of Grodpop, and I’ve never been to Dorset.”
“Well, get ready,” I smiled, “because we’re going.”
We were interrupted and delayed yet again. First Angdar and secondly Harry Flash.
“I’ve decided that I used to live right here,” Angdar told me, thrusting his muscles out of his sleeveless tunic top. Butterfield had offered him clothes of our time, grand ones or simple, whatever he wished. But he’d chosen to stay as he was in the clothes which made him feel comfortable. At least he’d allowed her to present him with a pair of shoes. Now he was explaining with great animation how he had recognised our village. “Much changed,” he said, which wasn’t surprising. “We had a village, but we lived in the great hall, though many had their own huts, or lived on their boats down on the beaches.”
“Since you were buried here,” I answered him, “I think that makes sense.”
“Ah yes,” he said, eyes shining, “but it means something else too. Even though I was chieftain, someone stole my great axe. That may not sound like much, but it meant a lot to me. That axe was my great battle weapon, and it was given to me by my father, who was chieftain before me. He was Tangmar the Golden, and the greatest warrior we’d ever had. This axe was a magnificent blade, and the handle was inlaid with both gold and silver runes. Really beautiful. My clan used to say it must be magic, since it was never vanquished.”
“Who stole it?” A sensible question.
“I don’t know,” Angdar admitted. “I questioned my brother. I questioned my wife’s brothers. And then I ended up questioning every single one of my clansmen. But none of them admitted they’d done it, and none of them seemed to be lying. They just didn’t seem guilty. But I swore I’d find it before I died.”
“But you didn’t?” That was fairly obvious. “So you died without it?”
That was fairly obvious. “So you died without it?”
“I called it Thor’s axe, and I wondered if it was Thor himself who claimed it back. But I still died without it. I went searching for Thor once I’d arrived in Valhalla, but I never found him.”
“Well,” I said, secretly trying to get my own unpractised magical trace to work as Whistle had with Fanny’s curse, but nothing seemed to pop up. I was still trying when Harry Flash wandered over. He ignored Angdar and looked hopefully at me.
“I’ll try and help,” I told Angdar, “as will Butterfield. In the meantime,” I turned back to Harry, “I’ll try and help you too.”
Harry waited until Angdar had marched off, then said in a low voice, “Where’s Fanny? Can I do anything special for her?”
Well, that was a clue and a half! I laughed, “Yes, of course. She’d be delighted. She’s had a difficult life, you know, especially the last year. I take it you feel for her. Or do you just really like her?”
“All of it,” smiled Harry.
I couldn’t actually think of anything she needed at the moment except solving all the complications of the poisoned curse. “I’m about to take her to a village in Dorset called something I’ve forgotten,” I mumbled. “So that’s number one, off to Dorset. Number two, find Angdar’s axe. Number three, check over the new cottage we’ve built and make sure there’s no problems, number four, start advertising for any witches or wizards who need a home and looking after, and number five, think of something you can do for Fanny. There’s a number six too, since I haven’t fed the donkey yet this morning.”
Harry smiled. “You start with your number one, and I’ll feed Donald.”
In the end it was the next day to travel, because Harry quickly found Fanny, and led her off with him to feed the donkey, and presumably discovered his own way of making an impression on her, since I couldn’t find Fanny for the rest of the day. I knew that as long as she was happy, it was best to leave her to it. However, I decided that the next morning I’d wake her early before she had a chance to roam.
Not such a brilliant idea as it turned out since we’d been having the most glorious autumn weather with a blazing sunshine over the changing autumn leaves, bringing a sizzling fire gleam of golden, russet and splashes of scarlet. The countryside around the Rookery was stunningly beautiful. However, this new planned morning brought an early winter storm. Oh, charming. Crashing bolts of lightning, rolling thunder and pouring sleet. How perfect for travelling.
Waking Fanny, I pointed to her window. “A slight negative,” I admitted. “But we can try and fly above the clouds. And hopefully the storm will pass over anyway or blow east as we fly south. You’ll need your cloak and some good shoes. Do you need anything else?”
She shook her head and showed me all her good clothes laid out ready. I’d made half of them for her, and evidently the others had been recent gifts. I bet some were from Harry.
I left her to get dressed and when she scuttled downstairs, I quickly took Fanny’s hand, and we flew. In the first few minutes we were drenched, but we managed to fly above the rain clouds. Coming down though was not so pleasant.
Grodpop Under Lea was not a particularly attractive little place. Actually, I thought it rather dull. You couldn’t see anything except identical cottages and a straight street with a central gutter full of sparrows trying to eat all the rubbish, and a stray dog nudging them out of the way. There was one shop which appeared closed, no tavern, no nice trees and no village green. A slight hillside with bare rocky joints rose to one side, and I presumed that was the Lea.
At first, I sensed no magic, and then abruptly it swam towards me. And stank. This was no sweet magical friend. It made my fingers twitch, and my mouth taste of dead and decayed fish. I turned around, trying to get the direction accurately. Not so easy, actually, since it was swirling all over the place.
“Don’t you feel it?” I asked Fanny. She was just standing there, watching me and thinking me crazy.
Finally, with a loud sniff, she squeaked, “A little bit.”
At first, I thought the sniff was the beginning of tears, but I realised it was her smelling a wave of that vile stench.
“Disgusting, isn’t it?” I said. She murmured in vague agreement, but clearly sensed very little. Poor girl had lost more of her magical powers than I had realised.
“I expect you’ll smell it stronger when w
e get closer. At the moment it’s hard to get any direction, but I can promise you, this is where that horrible curse is coming from. Even the red cup wasn’t much stronger than this.” I hadn’t told her about the red cup, and didn’t have time to do so now.
The street where we stood was fairly empty because of the rain, but a few people tottered around, hoods pulled up over their heads, as they hurried home, hurried to the shop, or hurried to wherever they wanted to visit.
I was trying to follow the awful smell, but it floated all over the place, so wasn’t easy to find direction. Eventually I managed to lead Fanny right into the face of the storm so to speak, to an old barn at the outer edge of the village, right under the rocky hillock.
“Poison under Lea,” I murmured to Fanny.
I was staring at the cliff face. Part of the Lea Hill was grassy, gentle, and could be climbed if you were stupid enough to want to do that. But other parts were rocky, with jagged stones sticking out. The part where we now stood was like a sheer unapproachable face of smooth limestone. And there, built right up against it, was a very long thin house, only enough for one room, and one room above, then finally one room on the very top, each jutting out to keep balance. It was dark and it stank.
“Who lives here? Do you know?” I asked Fanny, but she shook her head at once, shivering in fear.
“It feels so threatening,” she whispered.
“It may look that way, but I’m in charge,” I said quickly before she started crying. “My grade is ninety-eight. Have I told you that already? Even if there’s someone stronger than me in here, it can only be a ninety-nine. One point won’t make too much difference.”
“One hundred?” she gazed, wide eyed.
“No,” I said at once. “Our righteous and beautiful King Tullip, and our High Court Judge are the only hundreds in existence.”
That put her mind at rest, but it wasn’t actually helping me. I wondered how any wizard could smell this foul. But I walked up to the horrid house and knocked on the door.