Gods-forsaken witches. I should check what the date is sometime soon. I don’t need yet another ridiculous name. I picked this one barely seven centuries ago after my previous name became too well known.
Needs must. I shrug a reluctant acquiescence and walk with her towards the tree line, the smell of pine needles and old growth prickling my nose.
“There’s also something about a breakfast of Polenta you get, but we think that’s optional.”
I grimace at the thought. “I think we can let that slide.”
A couple of similarly garbed young witches who were dealing with the other transports fall into step besides my witchly companion as we pick our way through puddles, the crack of thin ice a serenade as we walk.
They all have the same look, these witches, an artist’s caricature of the type of attractive young witch that every aspiring Matthew Hopkins wished to prick. Dark hair glistening in the rain and a shimmy to their walk that comes from insouciant confidence.
So similar they must be related.
My guess would be cousins. Not close enough for sisters but a blood relation. I know family, and I know blood. Time has eroded away desire though, so it is like appreciating a pack of well-appointed hounds playing after a successful chase rather than anything more earthy.
The first witch is not the same. She looks like them, but she is not of them. A foundling of some kind. Appearances can change. A witch can appear just as she chooses.
“Right, Lumpy. We’re here.” The first witch holds a finger to her lips. “Shush now, adults talking.”
There is a burst of fast French from the trees and a green garbed Witch steps out. Older than the others and with a deer heart in her hand. She squeezes and gestures through the close knit trees which part with a creak like a ship in a storm at her muttered request.
Blood drips to the ground. She whispers a benediction in an old Celtic tongue.
“Forest stepping. Very good.”
Some things never change, nature and witches were always linked. The green witches make paths where there are none through forests which travel and propagate without concern for time. I have heard interesting things about what lies at the end of those woods.
The others on the Masters council had always found it a little ridiculous. It definitely created problems. Nothing worse than a wandering forest making rooty tracks over the fences of a new settlement, cleared at great expense for our associates. There were clashes and complaints in the days when we were finding our boundaries, discussions and meetings and even a few fights.
Fae and Witches and Vampires. The three old powers. Always butting up against each other.
Helene had spent a few years as a witch after learning a bit about them at a meet up I had arranged. What had that been about? Oh yes, an oak of the old kind that had taken up residence in a graveyard we maintained. It had taken a liking to the quality of the soil and was threatening to bring friends.
Hadn’t stuck though, the Oak or Helene. She had always had too much interest in mechanical matters for that sort of nature love to take and the Coven mistress of the time had taken it well enough when she had asked to leave.
Into the forest now. We leave Mr. Johnson-Pole and his minions behind at the ambush site as we walk through the musty trees at the boundary of the world-wood.
Something occurs to me as we transition.
My sense of smell has always been sharp, and these trees at the edge don’t smell right, they look to be oak and elm, ash and willow, but they have a slight hint of mushroom and caves to them. The leaves are too bright and heavy, the veins are gummy and dark.
Someone has been playing with their essence, probably to make them better suited to a world of darkness and red shadow.
The same for the plants below me, the grass, even the berries, I wonder for a moment who has done this, witches? Johnson-Pole’s people? My people? The Fae would not have bothered. Is there an answer here to my questions?
I sweep up a stick to chew to the faint exasperation of my guardians. I take a careful look before tasting it, flaking bark and cracking into the phloem.
“What are you doing Monsieur?” asks one of the witches.
“Tasting the waters.”
“Look Master Lump. We’re happy enough to be sorting out this rescue you don’t seem to have needed for you, but it’s pissing it down and we all have had quite enough rain for the day.”
I bite into the stick. The stick tastes of stick. The witches look at me pityingly and two of them mutter something about ‘buried alive’.
I slightly regret my action.
Oh well, sticks are sticks and that mushroom smell is a mystery that can wait for a warmer conclusion amongst more civilised company. The terms of my rescue run both ways, and I can expect quite a pleasant welcome when we reach the quaint little village that shelters the local coven.
The hospitality of witches is world renowned.
End result of said hospitality can vary depending on how you treat them and whether they want to eat you or not… I kid. But for me I suspect the omens are good. Somewhere up above the trees and the clouds and their denizens the stars still shine and one of them is predicting warm tea, some cakes and perhaps a little good and meaningful conversation at last.
And maybe just a little blood. For taste you know. And to clear the taste of stick and mulch from my tongue. Wet the vocal cords maybe. I have been told I have the voice of an angel and my current tomb-croak is wearing at my nerves.
6
Retrospection
Oh delights of the past, and wonders of the present!
My expectations have been met, and more. The witches were always my favourites amongst the powers. None of the formality of my kind, that hidebound quality that I so despised even in my own get, nor the devil may care of the Fae and their pandering courts.
Solid folk. You know where you stand with a witch.
Or sit.
In my case, I am sitting in a well-upholstered chair in a comfortable cottage in a quaint village which could have fallen out of my time or any other for the four hundred years before that. Good trimmed thatch roofs. Neat little homes clustered under the trees. Enclosures holding sleek livestock, and fat pigs which wander at ease amongst the playing children careering around the witches as they work.
Chickens hopping and flapping around. Pecking at the muddy earth by a gurgling river for things that slither in slime in every age.
My one disappointment is the absence of at least one candy house, from Helene’s tales I had thought it was a witch tradition to have at least one to keep the children happy. Might dissolve in the rain though.
A pleasant home for a coven of witches and their families and friends and wards. Out of the way, quiet but for bird song and the everyday sounds of a thriving community.
“Get that down you”. The young witch who has christened me “Master Lump” or “Lumpy” or “Lumpster” depending on her moral assessment of my previous actions brings me some fresh baked scones on a plate, the expected herbal tea (witches love herbal tea) and some congealed blood jam.
I beam.
“Now I really must acknowledge your kindness Mistress…” I let the hook dangle.
“What is it with you old Vampires and your name finding?” She wags a finger at me and gives me a serious glare. “You should eat. You look like death warmed up. Or mebbeh a vagabond death singed at the edges. Scrawny and frazzled.”
She has a pleasant earthy laugh that shakes her shoulders and makes her thick ponytail of lush black hair bounce. Life incarnate.
Her clothing is interestingly informal. She has changed out of the outdoors robes and hat from the ambush into a fetching combination of a short sleeved shirt of some kind and loose blue fabric trousers which swish around over a pair of moccasins.
Sensible clothes for a warm drawing room with a roaring fire and a variety of aromatic herbs hanging from the rafters.
Herbs. As Helene always used to say, “Some for protection
and some for concealment and most for taste.” She would enthusiastically make the most unearthly concoctions during (and after) her time amongst the witches, which she kept in metal containers for later consumption.
Around half the time the liquids and powders contained therein burnt their way out of their containers and pooled in sad multi-coloured puddles on the floor of our residence when she visited. I think that witch herbcraft might be a subject that benefits from several centuries of practice rather than a couple of years as a novice.
I can’t imagine the havoc she must have wrought on the carpeting of these delightful cottages.
And of course with her mechanical bent, she used a metal rotary grinder to reduce her ingredients which attracted some very forlorn looks from her coven.
The witch is looking at me. I must have drifted off.
“My name is Andrea though. I don’t mind you using it but remember your manners. Same goes for all around here. This is our place and you’re a guest. Honoured and all, but still a visitor.” She narrows her eyes, alarmingly. “On sufferance.”
“That will not be a problem, Andrea.” I pause a moment. “I’m a little confused by you to be truthful, you look like your… coven sisters? But you don’t sound like them and there’s a modern scent to your blood. Would you indulge my curiosity a little?”
“Sure.” Andrea settles into a pile of cushions by the fire flipping her hair across the shoulder furthest from the flames. A rotund cat pads over to take up a lazily comfortable residence beside her. “You don’t mind if Hemlock listens in do you?”
“By all means. Hello there, young fellow.”
The cat which is both fat and tabby gives me a yellow-eyed slow blink before kneading the nearest cushion. I take that as a yes.
“I was joshing you Master Lump. That’s Nan’ Edith’s cat and he’s deaf as a door post. He just has a hankering for this seat and is a stubborn old gent.” Hemlock collapses next to the young witch who pets him absentmindedly with long slim fingers. He has a little roll around and engages in some paw waving before going to sleep.
“So,” I begin, ‘by your accent and vocabulary you’re Irish?”
“Nice of yer to notice there, Lumpy. If one of me kin had rescued you, you’d be Monsieur Morceau by now. I’m from fair, lost Donegal. Where the rain crashed down daily and the sea got what was left.”
I prepare a jammy scone as we speak with careful strokes of the knife. “So, we are in France, but you are Irish? Mr. Pole was awfully cagey about, well. everything.”
She takes a sip of her tea. The purring from the sleeping cat and the crackling of burning logs fills the silence. “They’re like that, Agents. And as for the place? Well. That’s a story and a half.”
A further pause as if she’s weighing something up. “I suppose by your lights this would be France. And I suppose the same goes for my old home. I did come from Ireland. It’s just that if you were looking at a map you’d struggle to find either place nowadays.”
“Well that’s… horrifying.” More horrifying for Ireland than France. Hellish place. I had always felt that France was set in place by the gods as a warning to the politically and philologically curious. The other masters seemed to find it congenial enough to set up shop there though.
She puts her tea down and goes back to petting the cat’s tawny fur. The rumble of purring increases in volume until I am sure that the ground must start to shake.
“Ireland is better off where it is now.” She smiles. “Never had much luck with where it was before, bad neighbours one side and a battering from the sea on the other. When this hit some of the,” a chuckle. “Older inhabitants pulled it away to somewhere a bit more congenial. Can still talk to the kin there when the time’s right and the lines match up and the Fae Courts aren’t being wankers.”
Her eyes soften. “Can be fun finding out what’s what somewhere else when all you’ve got to look forward to here is what’s outside the village.”
“Really?” I had hoped there would be at least somewhere pleasant to visit.
She catches my meaning. “You saw some of the best of it, I’m afraid Lumps.”
“And…” I have to ask for completeness. “France?”
“You were in it, out beyond the woods. Physically there. The land remembers what it was. Long gone in the spirit though. Could as well be Limerick for all that matters. It’s like a stuffed cat, same look but dead as a dodo.” Hemlock growls in his sleep. “You go for a walk out there? There’s us in the forests. There are the ghouls in the mountains and there’s the Onions along the coast huddling behind their walls and chasing ghosts. Go east and you’d hit vamps and then the refugee barons and then the fecking Ruskies.”
“Hmm.” Vamps eh. That’s interesting. “And beyond the Russians?”
“Clouds. And death.”
“Like the ones above us? With the monsters.” I wriggle my fingers menacingly.
“As above, so below.”
“So if in some fit of madness I wanted to visit a patisserie?”
“Nope. All gone. The French State, long gone. Would be hurting for many Frenchmen too. There’s a few down south clinging to the Pyrenees and in the Protectorates in Spain but the war was like a big ole game of dominoes. If you’re looking for someone who was somewhere when you left you’ll likely find ‘em five hundred miles south and west of where you were lookin’.”
A war? Young Andrea is a veritable mine of information compared to Mr. ‘Go fish’ with his gimlet eyes and poor disguises. I may have a new best friend. “What happened to Paris? I had some friends there. And there are some records I need to look at.”
“Yup, those vamps between us and the Baronies. Big fans of ruins and so there’s a heap of you holed up in your horrid little boxes in the old city and in quite a few other cities too. Kicked the Onions out a decade ago now.”
“Who’s in charge?”
“Not the first idea and not something I’m hankerin’ to find out. Not a place we’d be goin, nothing to see unless you like radiation and screaming but you can go if you’re so minded, I’m sure they’d give you a warm welcome Monsieur Lump. Your lot have always been rule sticklers. Must be somethin’ broken in those dead blobs you call brains.”
A creak as the door to the kitchen opens.
“Ariadne, are you worrying our guest with things long past?” A truly old witch bent and gnarled like an old tree hobbles into the room with another plate of warm scones and a variety of jams which are probably more to her tastes than my favoured congealed blood preserve.
“He was askin’, and when are you going to get my name right Nan Edith?” asks the younger witch with an odd emphasis on ‘name’.
“When you stop annoying our guest here.” replies the Coven’s first. Witches seem to organise themselves around these very old, very wise, very slightly loopy old ladies. Trick is not to underestimate them and not to criticise their baking, as otherwise amphibian status awaits.
The last one I had dealt with, when I had been forced to politely request Helene’s return for an urgent mission, had been called Grams. She had been a baker and a riddle enthusiast. Exception that proved the rule. Too sharp to hide her own sharpness.
Edith passes the plates of baked treats to Ariadne, Andrea, (why does no one tell me their real names?) whatever and pulls the sleeping cat to her with a flick of her wrist. The cat and the plush cushion on which it is conducting its dream quest float up and over to her with a buzz like an angry wasp.
“Now off you go to give the children their supper and make sure that they brush their teeth. Sirene has had to pull too many rotten teeth recently thanks to a certain person’s love of giving them treats and they’re getting rather fat.” Her tone is more in amused sorrow than in anger. “I’ve got to have some words with Master…”
“Lump.” I confirm. Rules are rules. Hmm. Maybe Ariadne has a point. We are a little hidebound. I need to find a calendar at the first opportunity so I can work out when I can go back to being good
old Albrecht. My fifth name has lasted a while and I don’t wish to adapt to a sixth. Or a seventh.
So many names. Damnable witch humour. Ariadne sashays past with a grin grabbing a cake and shouting to the children playing outside, splashing in the mud under bright parasols that light up the village centre with golden light.
“She is a one that Ariadne.” the First is pondering which seat to take whilst her cat floats besides her.
“She told me her name is Andrea.”
She settles and her cat slowly settles with her. A shrewd look from green eyes surrounded by deep wrinkles. A matter of choice as witches can change form as they wish. “Well I wouldn’t know about that. It’s up to you what you choose to call the young ones around here Master Lump. I doubt they’ll give you their real names given some of the stories we’ve heard about you, but don’t take it too hard.”
I am incensed. “Stories? What kind of stories? Calumny and slander!”
And the witch cares not a jot, just examines pastry crust with a professional eye before looking up. “What did you say? I’m sorry my old ears aren’t what they were. Now would you be a dear and turn on the gramophone in the corner – I like my music if I’m going to talk about how things were. Helps jog my memory.”
I look around the room. Gramophone would be Greek for… letter-sound? That’s bordering on obtuse. The old witch watches me with sharp eyes for such a wrinkled face. There’s a hint of something to them. Maybe recognition?
“It’s the thing with the big horn attached, in the corner by the door. But don’t worry your head about it.” Music starts up.
“Arcane?”
“Remote control through wifi. I had the ladies rig up a lot of the house to it. My bones are aching, and the damp does get in so, would rather not stress my knees.” Her voice crackles with age and she bites carefully into a jam tart. “So, Master ‘Lump’. My ladies did what we agreed to do to uphold the old debt, That would make us about even? It’s one of the oldest we’ve got left in that silly old book and makes everything so messy so it would be lovely to draw a line through it. Aunty Clem would be so pleased. She had to do a whole lot of digging to find the terms and her eyes aren’t what they used to be.”
Master In His Tomb Page 6