A Guide for Young Wytches

by Jon Jacks

The fall of Berlin – that’s nineteen forty five.

  So that would make her around seven when she signed the book.

  I was sure, though, that it wasn’t a seven-year-old in the car arriving at the castle.

  I stepped over towards the drawer where I’d hidden the witch’s book.

  As I threw back the veiling clothes, I also flipped the cover aside, intending to make sure that I’d remembered the date she’d scrawled there correctly.

  But it isn’t a scrawl across the page. It’s neatly, even elegantly, written.

  And the date now is ‘1940’.

  I flip the cover closed once more.

  It has a new title.

  A Guide for Accomplished Wytches.

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 12

  Wands of Ash are good for healing and solar magic.

  A Guide for Young Wytches

   

   

  There’s an angry flutter of white against my windows.

  This time, it’s not just the snow however.

  There are feathers amongst that blinding white swirl.

  White and black feathers.

  The magpie.

  It caws, flies off. Vanishing into the flurry of rapidly falling snow.

  I dashed towards the window, peering out as intently as I could into the swirling snow. I could just make out the silhouette-like black shapes of the magpie as it headed towards the garden.

  Sections of the garden had been cleared of their covering of deep snow. The odd hedge, a few of squared-off borders. Certain areas of the path.

  They appeared dark, almost black against those areas still veiled by the snow. It appeared more than ever like a vast game board.

  And even though the snow was still drifting in heavily, those dark areas remained perfectly clear, almost perfectly black.

  And each was a perfect square. Even a perfect cube or rectangle, if you took into account the way the darkness continued up each bush, each tree.

   

   

  *

   

   

  ‘Do people clear certain parts of the garden for some reason?’

  I was with Richard again. We’d gone through the small talk, the greetings, the ‘How are you settling in?’ type of questions.

  He seemed puzzled by my latest query.

  ‘Not that I know of,’ he answered. ‘I can’t see that there’d be much point; it would be instantly covered in snow again in weather like this.’

  Unfortunately, we can’t see the garden from his window. So I don’t have any way of proving to him that the snow doesn’t seem to be falling in the areas already cleared.

  Rather than attempting to explain the reason for my question, I decided to see if there was anything odd about the castle or its history.

  ‘The boy who was pretending to be you,’ I began, ‘he said that the castle’s medieval, not Victorian as most people presume.’

  Richard nodded in agreement.

  ‘It seems that this doppelganger of mine did his homework; most people do assume it’s one of those later nineteenth century constructions that look wonderful but have no real military history of even use – castles that would be no more useful than a fairytale for holding back an enemy. Roxen castle – my castle – however, well: it has incredibly solid walls that could probably hold off even the most determined siege of a medieval army. There were battles around here; very ferocious ones, too, by all accounts. But the details on who was fighting whom is all a bit sketchy, I’m afraid – apart from the fact that it was my ancestors holding the castle, naturally! It’s all so long ago, when record keeping was flimsy at best, and more usually nothing more than lies and malicious propaganda!’

  With Richard’s mention of his ancestors, it abruptly dawned on me that I had no idea what any of his family, past or present, looked like; unlike most great families still living in a home passed down through the generations, they apparently weren’t interested in preserving their likenesses in the huge portraits you’d normally find gracing the hallways of such a grand castle.

  Perhaps due to its situation high in the mountains, its draughty corridors, the castle didn’t provide the ideal conditions for preserving paintings, which required specific temperatures and humidities if they weren’t going to badly disintegrate.

  ‘Where are your parents, Richard? You never mentioned them on hol–’

  I was about to say, ‘on holiday’, for I couldn’t always separate in my mind the boy I’d met on Corfu from the real Richard; they really did look and even sound so remarkably alike, barring the real Richard’s quite obvious weakness and illness.

  Richard grinned. Naturally, he knew what I’d been about to say.

  ‘They’re dead, I’m afraid,’ he replied, surprisingly coolly. ‘Car accident – long ago.’

  I gathered that he’d added the ‘long ago’ to explain his nonchalance over the matter.

  ‘Sorry.’ It was one of those situations where you can never be quite sure what else to say.

  ‘I didn’t really know them at all well, to be honest. I was very young when it happened. Fortunately, despite all appearances to the contrary, Lisa really cares for me; she made sure everything ran smoothly. Still does, of course.’

  ‘Does…does she run it all on her own?’

  Richard chuckled, stared at me wryly, as if wondering if I were joking or not.

  ‘Good lord no!’ he said firmly. ‘Who could run a castle like this on their own? Plus all the attendant estates, which bring in the rents and what have you. The castle alone needs a massive staff!’

  ‘Well, yes, I thought that must be the case…yet, well – I haven’t seen any so far.’

  ‘There are hidden corridors everywhere for the staff to go about their business without interrupting a guest, such as yourself, Danny. It’s like they say about a swan; all grace and effortlessness on the surface, but legs churning madly away beneath.’

  ‘So…you’ve seen them, yes?’

  If he’d looked at me a little doubtfully before, now his askew glance my way is full of both curiosity and disbelief.

  ‘Well, of course I see then, Danny! I’m not a guest. Sometimes they have to report to me, sometimes Lisa isn’t here – although, yes, that is thankfully rare – so they attend to me.’

  ‘And your angel – your angel for the Christmas tree? Are any of your staff looking for it?’

  His grin was partly suspicious smirk.

  ‘Danny, why are you full of all these questions all of a sudden?’

  ‘It’s just that…that, you know – I’ve had these really weird experiences, like a déjà vu, or something like that.’

  ‘I know a joke about déjà vu; but you’ve probably already heard it.’

  I smiled, even though I was a little annoyed that he seemed to be avoiding answering my question.

  I suppose, though, that I was hitting him with too many questions!

  ‘But, the angel – yes, the staff did look for it for a while,’ he said. ‘It’s a shame it’s gone missing, being a traditional finishing decoration for the tree. But truth be told, it was looking a bit jaded: it was very old, after all. For some reason, the material making up its gown and wings was becoming increasingly stained with soot from the hall fires, and we could never remove it. Instead of being pure white, it was almost black!’

  Almost black? Then what had I seen in that small utility room? That angel – if I really did see it, if it really existed – had been mostly pure white.

  The angel as it used to be?

  ‘What size was it, your angel?’

  He looked askew at me once again, as if about to point out that I was still hitting him with question after question.

  ‘Oh, quite large,’ he answered instead, using his hands to give an idea of its height. ‘Two feet maybe – at least!’

  ‘And its colours? Apart from this pure whiten
ess?’

  ‘Questions, questions!’ he chuckled.

  ‘Sorry; I’m just trying to picture it, that’s all,’ I lied.

  ‘Yes, it was mainly white; although it was unusual in that it had black lace edgings. But they actually helped the whiteness be more obvious; it seemed to make it even more blindingly pure, by comparison.’

  ‘Like…like a magpie, you mean?’

  The connection between the two – if indeed there actually was one – had only just dawned on me.

  ‘Sorry?’ He looked puzzled. ‘Magpie?’

  ‘Yes, yes; I mean the way the black feathers make the white ones appear even more intensely white.’

  Richard nodded as he thought about this.

  ‘Yes, I suppose a magpie is a good example of that.’

  ‘Or a chessboard – or a garden partly covered in snow, and partly uncovered.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Poor Richard was staring at me bemusedly once more; which wasn’t too surprising, as I’d been talking to myself rather than addressing him.

  It was another connection to the white and black of the angel that had only just occurred to me.

  (But was it a connection? Or was it just me conjuring up these false similarities in my mind?)

  If I was going to prove to Richard that he hadn’t invited some crazy girl to stay with him in his home, I needed to prove that I really was gradually unearthing some strange happenings within his castle.

  The book; A Guide for Young Wytches, or whatever it happened to be called now.

  I needed to show him the book!

  ‘I have something I need to show you!’ I exclaimed, rising excitedly from my seated position by Richard’s bed.

  ‘There’s no rush!’ he laughed behind me as I quickly slipped through the door. ‘I won’t be going anywhere!’

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 13

  For protection and the preparation for conflict, burn the wood and blooms of Gorse (or Furze).

  A Guide for Young Wytches

   

   

  As I passed by the very top of the Christmas tree, I was briefly fooled into thinking the angel had been found and restored to its rightful position once more.

  But it wasn’t the angel, of course.

  It was the magpie.

  Somehow, he’d got back inside the castle. And he’d taken to roosting up on the very top of the tree.

  What is it they say about ravens watching you ‘balefully’? Well this magpie managed to watch me with something more akin to a mischievous smirk, or maybe a challenging glower.

  In his beak, he was holding onto a gloriously long, black silk scarf. A scarf that fluttered behind him as he rose up into the air.

  I reached out, tried to snatch at the long, silky portion of scarf skimming by me.

  I missed, my fingers closing around only empty air.

  I was tempted to let the magpie fly off, assuming it would probably drop the scarf at some point anyway.

  But that challenging look he’d given me; I’m sure he was more or less daring me to try and get it back off him.

  I ran down the stairs, following the magpie as hurriedly as I could. It finally swooped low through yet another secret doorway I’d never noticed before.

  This doorway wasn’t hidden behind the tree. It was in plain view, only deliberately and deviously constructed to appear as just another part of a curving section of the wall.

  Slipping through this new door, I found myself in a narrow corridor, one hidden inside the wall itself. It was undoubtedly one of the secret tunnels used by the staff.

  It was lit only partially and dimly, with ancient gas mantle lamps placed every so often along one of the walls. The lamps gave the place an unusual sulphuric glow and smell.

  Far ahead of me, there’s a flash of white, hovering in the air: the magpie.

  The tunnel curved slightly, so I had to run to keep the magpie in sight. Suddenly, the whites of the bird vanished. Its feathers of black, the fluttering scarf of black, were abruptly obvious in their place, as I was confronted by an open door leading out towards the blindingly white snow.

  If the bird managed to get outside, I would have lost it. But I couldn’t see any way of preventing it escaping me now.

  I chased it out into the snow, the cold air striking me as forcefully as if I’d been plunged into an icy pool. My skin tingled, my eyes watered.

  It seemed deathly quiet out here, the snow muffling any sound.

  The magpie had thankfully come to rest on one of the snow-covered hedges, the blackness of his feathers, of the scarf, sharply outlined against it but for the still falling flakes.

  Quietly, slowly, so as not to startle him, I began to tread through the thickly fallen snow towards the hedge. I needed to recover the scarf as quickly as I could: it was freezing out here, and I was relatively flimsily dressed.

  Behind me, there was a dull clunk of heavy wood, a clang of metal.

  I whirled around.

  The door had slammed shut, leaving me out in the freezing snow.

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 14

  Making your Own Wand: Part 2

  You can use a windblown piece of wood the tree has naturally recently shed or, providing you ask permission from the tree in a respectful and intuitive way, cut the piece you believe you require.

  A Guide for Young Wytches

   

   

   

  I almost slipped a few times on the snow in my urgency to get back to the door.

  I tried pulling it, pushing it, barging furiously into it; all to no avail.

  I tried twisting the handle in a number of different ways; but still the door remained firmly, immovably shut.

  I banged on the door, shouted for help. But the only sound apart from my frenzied cries was the soft fluttering of the falling snow.

  What sort of help was I going to get from a staff I’d never seen?

  I was already frozen. Wrapping my arms tightly around my body hardly made any difference.

  I needed some other way to get back into some other part of the castle’s keep, or surrounding walls.

  Looking back out across the garden towards the soaring outer walls, I couldn’t immediately see any of the attached buildings I was expecting to see there at their base. There didn’t appear to be any doors or stairways leading into the towers either, although the thickly falling snow could well have been veiling these from me.

  The walls solidly loomed over everything like endlessly rising cliffs.

  I ran back out into the garden, all thoughts of chasing the magpie having flown with its own disappearance. The only sign that it had been on the hedge was the snagged and trailing scarf, which it had left behind, strewn across the whitened branches.

  I carefully unsnagged the scarf from the prickly branches, stretching up as high as I could. I had to deftly flip the higher parts of the scarf clear of the highest sections of the hedge.

  It wasn’t much, but the scarf might at least prevent the cold from penetrating down through the loose collar of my blouse.

  As I quickly wound the scarf around my neck, I almost instantly felt warmer.

  But maybe that shouldn’t have been such a surprise; because glancing about me, I realised I was inside a steamingly hot room.

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 15

   

  From other rooms, there are sounds of a raucous, drunken party.

  The singing, the cries of joy, all in German. Mixed in with a piano being played. Even trumpets, or some other wind instruments.

  There’s also the crackling of recorded music being played somewhere too.

  In the corridor outside, uniformed officers are slowly dancing with or at least holding tigh
tly onto girls and women dressed in elegant evening gowns.

  The dimly lit, damp and claustrophobically small rooms are at odds with this party atmosphere, as is the stench; the sickly sharp tang of sweat, urine, even faeces.

  I’m hot because I’m dressed once again in the warm winter coat I originally arrived here in. The two men with me are also dressed in heavy coats, ready to go outside.

  If there’s a lift, we’re not risking take it. Probably because the generator supplying the electricity is only working intermittently. The little light we have is flickering every now and again. The music on the phonograph slews to a brief halt, only to almost immediately start up again.

   We take a mix of steep stairwells, angled ramps, even the odd steel ladder.

  The higher we rise up through the surrounding earth, the more you can hear the steady crumps of the explosions regularly taking place on the surface. Here the walls are damper than ever, too, the water streaming down the sides. Powdered earth and concrete drops around us endlessly, all of it disturbed by the relentless bombardment of the Russian guns.

  Even though it’s more dangerous outside the bunker rather than living safely under what feels like mile-thick concrete, I breathe in the relatively fresh air with the relief of someone who’s been on the verge of drowning.

  The abrupt change in temperature almost instantly takes that breath away; despite my overcoat and scarf, it’s remarkably cold out here. Although I knew it was around midnight, I’m still taken by surprise by the darkness; my body lacks its otherwise natural sense of the passing of time, after living without daylight down in the bunker.

  Life in the bunker soon strips you of a number of things, not least your sense of being human, of humanity itself.

  Added to that, it reveals that your ideas of security, of hope and reassurance that all will end up well in the world, are all figments of your imagination. Everyone in there presumes the Russians will soon overrun this area, will soon discover them: naturally, few of them have been included in drawing up the wildly dangerous plans that could ensure their rescue.

  My worst experiences were with those whom I should have had a natural bond, the other witches and warlocks who had been brought in to accomplish their own, more relatively minor tasks.

  I disagreed with what they were attempting. Being English, however, and therefore already treated with suspicion, I dared not make my repugnance at their means known to them.

  It wouldn’t have swayed them anyway

  Poor Magda Goebbels: she believes she’s poisoning those wonderful children of hers to save them from the Russians – yet she’s only consigning them to a far worse fate.

  She blissfully believes her poor children now lie permanently asleep in their beds: yet their new role is only just beginning.