A bubble-bark sounded below and Mup looked down to see that Badger had reached the pleasantly weedy floor of the river. He was barking up at her as if to say, Where to, Mup?
Keep going, Mup thought. We need to cross the border! We need to get to the other side!
As though he’d heard her, Badger scrambled forward across the river floor, sending up glittering mud clouds and showers of bright-green weed.
Mup began swimming, dragging Mam above like an obstinately struggling balloon.
Soon Mup’s boots touched rocks and she too was running across the riverbed, with Badger by her side. It’s a slope! she thought. Like a hill under water! I’m running uphill under water!
A host of little fishes paused to watch her pass.
A hare! they cried, in startled silver voices.
It’s just a hat! thought Mup rushing by. I’m actually a girl.
But the fish darted away singing, The hare, the hare, the stitcher of worlds, hippiting, hoppiting, sometimes a girl!
Mam and Tipper were mostly under water now, but they couldn’t seem to get the hang of sinking properly, and they thrashed overhead, caught between the upside world and the down below in a foam of kicking legs and desperately waving arms.
Oh no! thought Mup. They’re drowning!
“THIS WAY!” Aunty’s voice called from the growing brightness ahead. “THIS WAY!”
Mup thought she saw a figure waving from the dazzling light that was coming through the shallower water there. I mustn’t let go, she thought, struggling forward. I mustn’t let go. But Badger was pulling at the end of his lead, and the riverbed was slipping and slithering beneath her feet, and Mam and Tipper shouted and tugged at the end of her arm, and everything was swirling and too bright and turning head over head over head over heels until Mup had no choice but to close her eyes.
I didn’t let go, thought Mup.
Nevertheless, when she awoke she was all alone and the world had changed. She leapt up, scattering the autumn leaves which had covered her. She was standing at the top of a small hill. It was covered in graceful trees, and at its base gurgled a bright and shallow stream. Across the stream were more trees – slender and airy, like the ones which surrounded her. They shed gold and copper leaves in luminous drifts, adding to the multitudes that already patchworked the ground.
There was a building visible within the woods across the stream. Mup tilted her head, regarding it closely. If she squinted one eye and closed the other, the building almost looked like her house. Though someone had added a platform to it, and a signal booth and … my goodness, was it a train station?
Mup shaded her eyes to see. Yes, she thought. It is. Someone has turned my house into a train station. What use can a train station be, though, when the tracks have been rolled up like liquorice? There really was no other way to describe it. Someone had taken the train tracks nearest Mup’s house and, working their way out into the countryside for about half a mile, rolled them back along themselves like some spectacularly large coil of wire.
There was no way any train would ever get to that station.
Mup shivered. I don’t like this, she thought. What’s become of my home? Where’s my mam? Where’s Tipper?
A person coughed behind her and a young – if hoarse – voice said:
“Doesn’t matter where your aim,
No point waiting for a train … eh … here.”
Mup turned to find a raven watching her from the lowest branches of the nearest tree. He was quite a young raven, very black and glossy, and he watched her first from one eye, then the other, waiting for her to reply.
“Um…” she said, glancing around to be sure no one else could have spoken. “Um … pardon?”
The raven hopped and fluttered. It sighed. Then, as if trying very hard to get every word correct, it said:
“Though the trains here used to run,
The queen has cancelled every one!”
He seemed very pleased with this, and he hopped again and preened his feathers. “That definitely rhymed,” he muttered. Then he glanced at Mup in alarm and said, “Fine! It rhymed, just fine. Fined! It rhymed just find!” He trailed off, apparently deflated.
“Have … have you seen my mam?” asked Mup. “A lady, with a baby in a … in a kind of bag. She might be with…” She trailed off, not sure how to explain Aunty’s ghost.
“I’ve seen no baby in a bag,
Not even carried by a hag.”
“Lady, I said! Not hag!”
The raven shook his feathers, flustered.
“Can’t think of a word to rhyme with Lady…
Shady…? Fadey…? Spadey…? Jadey…?”
“Does everything you say need to rhyme?”
The raven sighed.
“Each and every single time.”
“But why? Doesn’t it make it hard to talk?”
The raven jiggled and puffed up his feathers in frustration.
“You know quite well that it is law,
Rhyme’s the way we’re meant to … meant to…”
“Caw?” suggested Mup.
The raven glared at her.
“By the feathers on my beak,” he said,
“It’s the only way that we can speak.”
“You seem to find it very hard,” observed Mup with sympathy.
The raven sadly agreed:
“That is true.
All my rhyming sounds like…”
“Poo?” suggested Mup.
The raven fluffed and sputtered.
“Don’t be mad!” cried Mup. “I’m trying to make you not so sad!”
“Rhyming’s just a joke for you,
For me it’s hard and feels like—”
“Poo?” whispered Mup again – her brain apparently quite stuck on the word.
The raven cawed angrily and fluttered into the air.
“Easy to mock and bully and tease
When you can speak just how you please!”
He flew off into the trees, cawing angrily at the top of his voice.
“I was only trying to help!” called Mup.
She watched him go, thinking what a bad-tempered bird he’d turned out to be, and how glad she was to see the back of him. Then she realized that she was all alone in a strange wood (in a strange world) and she regretted him leaving. She pulled her coat tightly around her and regarded the leaves pattering down and the little stream at the foot of the hill and the strange little train station.
Is that really my house? she thought.
Should she venture down to it? What if there was a different kind of Mup in there, with a different kind of Mam and a strange sort of brother? She wondered if she made her way down there and knocked, who would come to the door?
Maybe, she thought, the trains don’t run because whoever lives there is very very scary…
A snuffling, scuffling, crashing sound startled her, and she crouched down as something large and dark approached through the bushes to her right. Bright clusters of berries shook, leaves poured down, and Badger came shoving through the slender branches, a very worried look on his face.
Mup leapt for him and hugged his neck. “Badger!” she yelled. “You’re safe! I was so worried you’d drowned.”
Badger seemed delighted to see her, but he didn’t waste too much time licking her face, before he turned and pushed back through the shivering berry bushes. He was obviously in a great hurry.
Mup adjusted her backpack, straightened her hat, and followed him deeper into the golden woods. She felt very relieved to find that he was heading in the opposite direction to the strange little house that bore so much resemblance to her own. Soon they reached the top of a leaf-blanketed hill, at the base of which Mam and Aunty were standing over Tipper’s tumbled baby-carrier, arguing.
Aunty was all transparent, the brightly coloured leaves and tree trunks showing through her angry face. “It’s not right!” she cried. “You can’t allow him to stay like that!”
Mam was taking th
ings out of the baby bag and flinging them on the ground. “Why not?” she said. “It’s certainly far less for me to carry.” She dumped a pile of nappies and threw the bottles on top. “There,” she said, slinging the bag back onto her shoulders. “So much lighter. Anyway, it’s much safer for him.”
“Safer?” cried Aunty. “He’s a dog!”
Mup was about to speak when something huge and warm and smelling faintly of baby powder burst from a bush, and started licking her face. “Augh!” cried Mup. And “Whuuu!” as she and a strong-bodied, fat-pawed, yellow-furred dog rolled downhill to land at Mam’s feet.
“Look!” yelled the dog, leaping off Mup and running round and round in an excited circle. “Look! I has a tail!”
Mup sat up in a tumble of leaves, gaping.
“And listen! Listen to this!” The dog sat proudly back on his haunches, cleared his throat and howled a long and mournful howl.
Badger, who had followed with dignified composure down the hill, winced.
“Tipper,” said Mam to the howling dog. “Shush.”
“T–Tipper?” asked Mup, astounded.
“Well, of course,” tutted Aunty. “Who else would it be?”
The dog wagged his tail. “Guess what, Mup?” He leaned conspiratorially close, managing to drool in Mup’s hair as he whispered not so quietly, “I made weewee in the bushes!”
Mup scratched her brother tentatively behind his ear. She wasn’t sure which was the more surprising, the fact that Tipper was now a dog, or the fact that he could speak far better than he’d used to as a boy. “Can Badger talk too?” she asked.
“Don’t be silly, Mup,” said Mam. “Badger is just an ordinary dog.”
Mup looked from her brother to her pet and back again. They both cocked their heads at her, and lolled their tongues. She couldn’t say she saw much difference between them.
Aunty turned on Mam again. “Why are you being so stubborn about this?” she snapped. “I’m telling you, you cannot leave the child like that!”
To Mup’s amazement, Mam just shrugged and shoved the baby-carrier under a bush with all the stuff she’d taken out of her bag. “He seems happy enough,” she said, regarding her son as he writhed delightedly in the leaves. “Besides, you weren’t the one carrying him.”
“Oh, of course!” cawed a familiar voice.
“Drop the child! Make him walk!
Tie his tongue so he can’t talk!”
They looked up to see the young raven glaring at them.
“Bird!” barked Tipper. “Bird! Bird!”
Mam reached down and gently held his mouth closed. “Quiet, Tipper. No one can know we’re here.”
“Typical!” cawed the raven.
“Better learn your poems, pup,
It’ll be the only way you can … the only way you can…”
“Speak up,” whispered Mup. But she didn’t make the mistake of finishing the raven’s rhyme for him this time. Failing to manage the task for himself, the angry young bird cawed in frustration and flapped away into the trees, leaving one lonely feather to spiral down in his wake.
“Who in grace was that?” said Aunty.
“Whoever it is,” growled Mam, “we need to catch him, before he caws our location to the whole of Witches Borough. Come on.”
Mup stooped to pick up the raven feather.
“Mup!” cried Mam. “Come on!” And, as Mup watched in open-mouthed amazement, Mam scaled the trunk of the nearest tree and began a rapid, graceful, deadly chase from branch to slender branch, following the raven’s voice deep into the woods.
“Stella!” yelled Aunty. “Come back here this minute and behave yourself.”
But Mam had already disappeared into the treetops.
“Damn it,” said Aunty, and she shot up into the branches after her, an angry ball of light, leaving Mup and Tipper and Badger to gape from the ground below. Soon the only thing to be seen of Mam or Aunty were the leaves which fell in a bright shower of colour as Mam moved from tree to tree.
Tipper prowled an anxious circle. “Oh, Mup,” he whimpered. “What we do?”
Badger bounded to the edge of the clearing, woofing and eager.
Tipper scampered over to him, yapping with excitement. “Yes!” he woofed. “Me and Badger chase them! Chase! Chase!”
“What about me?” cried Mup. “There’s no way I can keep up with your four legs.”
“Climb!” woofed Tipper.
“I … I’m not allowed to climb. Aunty said—”
“Mammy climbed!” he said. “Aunty climbed! You climb, Mup!”
The raven’s cawing was getting further away now, and Mam was out of sight entirely. Badger backed into the bushes, whining as if to say, “Hurry now, hurry!”
Mup placed her hand on the trunk of the nearest tree. Something seemed to overtake her then, some wonderful smooth understanding of her mind and body, and suddenly she was slipping upwards through the branches. The leaves were a delightful tickle at her cheeks, the white bark thin and papery beneath her hands as, lithe as a squirrel and just as weightless, she climbed the welcoming tree.
“Wow!” Tipper barked up at her. “Wow!”
Then he was chasing through the leaves below as Mup was racing through the leaves above, the branches springing gladly beneath her hands and feet, for all the world as if this were the only way she’d ever travelled. Tipper and Badger were dashes of black and gold beneath. Her mother was a compass point ahead. Mup followed unerringly in her wake as if following a clearly marked path.
It was exhilarating. It was amazing.
How fast and fluid she was. How graceful. How high above the world.
Mup quite forgot they were chasing another creature until she came to the place where the raven flew above the treetops. Then she heard his terrified caws, and saw his terrified face, and witnessed the puff of loosened feathers as her mother leapt from the branches like a cat, and snatched him from the air.
Mup cautiously descended from the treetops. She was not cautious from fear of falling – she’d never felt more secure. She was cautious of this fierce, new version of her mother whom she could see on the ground below pacing to and fro within the tiny space of a forest clearing. Aunty was watching from the shadow of a tree, dappled and uncertain.
“Oh,” said Mam. “Oh. The power. How could you have taken me from this place? How could you?”
“It was for your own good,” said Aunty.
“You’ve never let me even try to climb trees. You said I was too clumsy! You said I’d fall.”
“Maybe you would have.”
Mam pointed back the way she’d come. “As soon as I touched that tree, I knew I could climb it. It’s like I was made to climb it. How could you have kept that from me?”
“Well, what did you expect me to do? I had to keep you safe. Can you imagine people’s reaction out in the mundane world if you suddenly started” – Aunty waved a hand to the treetops – “misbehaving like that. You’d never have had a chance of fitting in.”
Mam clutched her head and made a frustrated sound. “All these years,” she said. “All these years of feeling awkward and anxious and – gah! I could have been that! I could have felt like that!”
Mup finished climbing slowly downwards, her eyes on Mam. She reached the ground and her feet met the soft carpet of leaves, but she did not lift her hands from the trunk of the tree. She was afraid that if she let go she’d go back to being Mup again, just Mup. No longer this bigger, better creature – graceful and sure and part of the forest – no longer part of something larger than herself.
She pressed her hands to the trunk and gazed up into the tree. Thank you, she thought.
Above her, the branches swayed in the breeze. My pleasure, they seemed to say.
Mup reluctantly let go.
The colours of the forest dimmed a little, as though the trees had stepped away. Mup felt immediately cold and small. She noticed for the first time that Mam had the raven clutched in her hands. The po
or thing was too terrified to even struggle.
“Mam,” said Mup. “The raven.”
Her mother looked down at the stricken bundle of feathers, as if only just remembering it. “Who are you?” she hissed, drawing him close. “Do you know where my husband is?”
The raven shut his eyes as though to cut out the pale and angry face of the woman who held him so tight.
“Mam,” said Mup. “You’re hurting him!”
“Go easy on him, Stella,” said Aunty. “Can’t you see he’s very young?”
“But who is he?” asked Mam, brandishing the raven at her. “Who is he? And why is he spying on us?”
“I’m only Crow,” whispered the raven.
“Don’t hurt me so.”
“Don’t hurt you? I’ll wring your neck if you don’t tell me where Daniel is.”
“Stella!” cried Aunty. “Control yourself!” She was angry now, and – as before – her anger seemed to make her more solid. She snatched the raven from Mam’s hands.
“Control myself? I don’t even know myself!”
“Oh, tosh!” Aunty snapped, and she strode from Mam to the other side of the clearing, where she snagged a thread of scarlet wool from Mup’s dress. She blew on the wool, and, to Mup’s amazement, it squirmed to life, lengthening and growing in Aunty’s transparent hand.
“Get me a rock, Pearl,” said Aunty.
Mup ran and found a rock about the size of her fist. She offered it to Aunty.
“Net!” commanded Aunty. With extraordinary speed, the wool squirmed across to Mup’s palm, tickling her as it wriggled in and under and over itself, weaving an intricate net around the stone.
“Oh, Aunty,” gasped Mup, touching a finger to the lovely crochet-work which now encased the heavy rock. “Am I able to do that?” (How much better those awful school-time knitting classes would have been, had Mup been capable of commanding the wool like that!)
“Who knows what you can do,” snapped Mam. “It’s not like she was ever planning to tell us.” And then to Aunty she said, “I thought you said you’d be no use over here, old lady? I thought you said you’d have no powers.”
Begone the Raggedy Witches Page 4