“You’ll need a damn sight more than simple knot magic,” muttered Aunty, “if you’re to face your mother.”
“You just didn’t want to help me cross the border.”
“That’s right,” snapped Aunty. “I didn’t!” Then to the wool she said, “Bind!” The free end wrapped itself, as quick as you like, into the most complex of knots around the raven’s scaly leg.
Aunty released him, and he immediately tried to fly away, jerking the rock from Mup’s hand. The weight of the stone pulled him down, crashing him hard to the forest floor. He leapt in panic for the air again, and once again crashed violently to the earth.
“Aunty,” cried Mup. “Let him go! He’ll hurt himself!”
But Aunty was already crossing to Mam, who still prowled like a caged tiger within the confines of the small clearing.
“I remember all this,” said Mam. “All these beautiful colours. This powerful feeling. I remember it clearly.”
“You can’t possibly remember. You were only five when we left.”
“You told me this was a terrible place. You told me it was bad for me.”
“It is a terrible place. Your mother made it terrible.”
“How could you have done this to me? Making me live all those years in that grey world. Making me pretend to be something I wasn’t.”
Grey world? thought Mup. Surely Mam didn’t mean their home? Mup went to object. But then she remembered how small she’d felt after climbing down from the trees, and how colourless – and she closed her mouth, because she realized that she understood exactly what Mam meant.
“But we have a great life there!” cried Aunty to Mam. “We’re happy there!”
“I’m not happy! I’m only ever pretending! I only ever feel like I’m playing a part!”
“Oh, everyone feels like that,” huffed Aunty. “No matter where they are.”
Mam flung up a hand, and power sparked like small lightning between her fingers, making Aunty flinch. “Look at this! How can you have denied me this all these years?”
Aunty turned away. “I was scared,” she said softly. “I was scared that if I encouraged it, your mother would come for you. You don’t want to be part of the world she’s built over here, Stella.”
Mam dropped her hand. “She can’t be that bad … can she?”
“She is. Stella, she really is. You’ve no idea. You’d have had no chance with her … none. She’d … she’d have broken everything good about you.”
“And now she has my dad,” said Mup.
Aunty met her eyes, and looked away again. “We don’t know who has your dad,” she said.
Tipper came racing into the clearing, Badger by his side.
“Mam! Mam!” barked Tipper “We runned very fast and then we found you!” He skidded to a halt at the sight of the raven. “Oh,” he said. “Bird.”
Badger growled, and Tipper circled back to his side. “There’s a tangledy bird,” he said.
At the sight of the dogs, the raven had stopped fluttering, and he cowered wide-eyed in the leaves.
Mup touched his trembling back. “It’s OK, Crow,” she said. “This is just my family. My mam and aunty, my brother and my dog. They won’t hurt you.” The raven’s feathers were stiff and glossy beneath her fingers. She could feel his heart hammering. He shot a bright, terrified glance her way. “I promise,” she said. “No one here will hurt you.”
“We need to leave, Stella,” said Aunty. “That raven is very young. He’s hardly likely to be out on his own. We can’t risk his people finding us without knowing what to expect from them.”
The raven moaned as Mam turned to look his way.
“It’s OK,” whispered Mup. “It’s OK.” But even she was frightened by the expression on her mother’s face. When Mam came and snatched Crow – stone and all – from his huddle on the ground, the poor bird had barely time to squawk before he was shoved out of sight into the baby bag and slung onto Mam’s back.
Mup watched, frozen for a moment, as Mam strode into the trees.
Aunty bobbed in her wake. “What exactly is your plan, Stella?”
“Well, until you offer me some information or useful advice, I’ll just have to continue making things up as I go along.”
“You’re going to walk until you get to your mother’s palace, is that it? Knock on the door? Demand she give your husband back?”
“If that’s what it takes. Yes.”
“Kidnapping ravens as you go?”
Mam huffed and marched on. Mup ran to catch up. Tipper bounced, yapping and eager, to her side. “Where’s we going, Mup? Am we keeping the bird?”
“Just keep up, Tipper,” said Mup, her attention fixed on the baby bag, which swayed on her mother’s back. She didn’t like to think of Crow inside, all tangled together with the stone and the string. She jogged closer to Mam. “Crow?” she whispered. “Are you OK?”
There was a small sobbing noise from the bag, then nothing more.
Mup glanced up at Mam. Her brows were creased in a firm dark way which said, Don’t talk to me.
Mup grimaced.
They strode on in tense silence, and Tipper soon got bored. He ran ahead. Mup watched him weave to and fro, copying Badger as he hunted scent on the path. Aunty was a fleeting shimmer, coming and going from sight as she drifted through patches of light and shade. Mam was cold and fierce and determined.
Is this really my family now? thought Mup. That ghost, these dogs… She glanced back up at her mam. This witch? She didn’t even have to pinch herself to know the truth.
* * *
They walked all day meeting no one and seeing nothing but trees. When the moon rose, full and knowing, into the network of branches above their heads, Mam called a halt. She and Mup gathered sticks and dry grass, like when they were camping, and built a tiny fire. Tipper flopped down into the leaves, panting, and Mup sat across the fire from him while Badger did a snuffling patrol of their surroundings. Aunty, nothing now but a small ball of light, glided up the nearest tree, and roosted there like an owl.
Mam’s eyes flashed to her as she struck a match to the tinder. “Are you all right up there, old lady?”
“I’m tired,” whispered Aunty. “It’s been a long day.”
“I’m sorry we argued.”
Aunty pulsed slightly: a kind of a weary shrug.
“Thank you for sticking around. I don’t know what I’d have done without you when they came last night.”
“Don’t know what you’ll do if they come again, Stella. Don’t fool yourself that you’re strong enough to resist them.” Mam tutted and snapped twigs into the fire, and Aunty sighed. “Don’t know how much longer I can stay. Very tired. Feeling a little thin.”
“Get some sleep,” Mam said. She huddled into her jacket, frowning into the flames as they took hold of the wood. At her feet, Tipper snored, lax and golden and happy. Badger came and watched the fire awhile, his chin on his paws, then closed his eyes.
“Go asleep, Mup,” said Mam.
Mup startled, surprised that Mam had known she was still awake. Had Mam known Mup was watching her? Had she felt Mup examining the shadows and highlights of her smooth pale face?
“Do you know how to find Dad?” Mup asked softly.
Mam’s dark eyes flickered in the firelight. She seemed to consider something a moment – whether or not to tell the truth, maybe – then said, “No.”
“Are we just going to keep walking for ever?”
“Until we get to a town or a road or something and Aunty can get her bearings. Apparently things have changed a lot since we were last here.”
“And then we rescue Dad?”
Mam nodded.
“And then we all go home?”
Mam frowned. She looked down into the fire again. Mup felt a little thrill of anger, thinking she wouldn’t answer the question, but then Mam said, quietly, “Would you want to go home, Mup?”
The anger turned to fear. “Of course I want to go home.”
“R
eally? Back to homework and grocery shopping and television?” Mam glanced at Aunty’s small light. There were snores coming from it, faint but steady. Mam leaned forward as if not wanting to disturb Aunty. “You felt what it was like to climb that tree, Mup. You don’t want to lose that feeling, do you?”
“Aunty says it’s dangerous here.”
Mam spread her hands and allowed lightning to crackle between her fingers again. “Maybe we’re fit for it,” she whispered.
“Tipper is a dog here, Mam.”
“Tipper is a baby. Who knows what he might like to be when he grows up.”
“A dog, though?”
Her mother shrugged as if to say, It’s up to Tipper.
“What about Crow?” asked Mup.
“Who?”
“Crow, Mam. The raven.”
Her mother sighed.
“You can’t leave him in that bag all night.”
“He’s fine, Mup. He’s probably fast asleep in there, dreaming of worms. I’ll decide what to do with him in the morning.”
“It’s cruel.”
“It’s necessary.”
Mup tightened her arms and her jaw.
Mam surprised her by smiling. “Go to sleep, Mup,” she said gently. And as if to set a good example, Mam lay down in the leaves next to the dogs, cushioned her head in her arms and closed her eyes.
“Crow?”
“Leave me alone.”
Mup glanced back at the flickering fire. Mam and Tipper and Badger were sleeping. Aunty snored in her tree. Quietly, Mup knelt by the bag which still hung from the branch where Mam had left it.
“I just want to make sure you’re OK in there. I … I thought I heard you crying.”
“You thought wrong!” exclaimed the raven. “I never cry.”
Mup smiled. “You’re forgetting to rhyme,” she whispered. “Aren’t you meant to? Every time?”
“No need for poems now I’ve been arrested,” he muttered. “One good thing about being a jail bird: I won’t have to bother hunting out no more bloody rhymes.”
“You’re not arrested, Crow.”
“I’m not?”
“No. My mam’s just worried you’ll tell people where we are. She’s only trying to keep me and Tipper safe.”
There was a moment of silence from the bag. Then a round, bright eye appeared at the flap. Crow regarded her curiously. “What’s that like, then?” he said at last.
“Pardon?”
“To have someone who cares if you’re safe?”
He didn’t sound so gruff now. He just sounded young and interested, and a little lonely.
“Don’t you have a mam and dad, Crow?”
“I … I have a dad. He’s gone, though. I miss him.”
Mup leaned closer. “Oh, Crow. I’m sorry.”
The round, bright eye blinked at her, then Crow pushed his head closer to the gap. “Mup…?” he whispered. “Let me out.”
“I can’t believe it,” growled Mam, crunching her way through the leaves ahead. “I cannot believe she did that.”
“She’s just a child.”
“After I told her. After I warned her.”
Aunty sighed her transparent sigh and drifted luminously along behind.
“When I catch that raven,” said Mam, “oh, the things I’ll do to it.”
Mup trudged miserably in their wake. When she had released Crow from the bag, she had been filled with sympathy and with certainty that it was the right thing to do. She’d had no clear idea of what might happen next, but there had been vague and cosy notions of whispered chats by the fire, Mup magnanimously sharing the crust from her sandwiches, Crow’s gratitude.
When Crow had stuck out his leg in wordless command that she untie him, she’d felt the smallest twinge of doubt. But she’d bent to the task, because who would want to be tied to a rock? The wool had recognized her touch and slithered away from the stone like water dribbling from a tap – all the beautiful crochet netting undoing itself in one easy release until it was just a length of scarlet tied to the bird’s ankle.
Crow had leapt from her with a flurry of dark wings. Mup had shrunk back, and when she’d looked up he was gone. For a long time after, she’d searched the firelit branches for the glimmer of his eye, but she knew he’d fled.
Mup hugged herself in unhappiness, betrayed that he’d left without so much as a goodbye or a thank you. But who could blame him? she thought, glancing up at her furious mother striding through the morning sunshine. In his shoes, I would have done the same thing.
“You made Mammy scary,” whispered Tipper accusingly. “Why am you so naughty?”
Mup felt very angry suddenly, at just how unfair everyone was being. “It was mean!” she cried. “Putting Crow in a bag like that. Tying him to a stone. It was cruel!”
“Cruel?” cried her mother, swinging around to face her. “He’s a spy!”
“He’s not a spy! He’s just a…” For some reason Mup wanted to say “boy”, but that wasn’t right. “He’s only young,” she said. “And you put him in a bag!”
Her mother faltered, seemingly uncertain.
Aunty drifted impatiently in the background, scanning the trees. “We have to be careful here, Pearl,” she said. “We have to keep ourselves safe.”
“By tying up helpless birds and shoving them in bags?”
Aunty huffed. “It’s not so easy to know what’s helpless here, and what is not.”
But Mam was frowning thoughtfully at Mup.
“It wasn’t right, Mam,” said Mup softly.
Mam bent down so they were face to face. When had her skin become so smooth and pale? Had her eyes always been so dark? Always, thought Mup, with a start. Mam has always looked like this. It was as though Mam had spent her whole life out of focus, like a blurry photograph, and now – on this side of the border – Mup was seeing her clearly for the very first time.
Do I look different too? she thought.
Mam stared deep into Mup’s eyes. She seemed to be searching for something there. For one moment Mup was terrified that her mam was going to ask, “Who are you?” But a fierce commotion broke out in the trees ahead, and Mam swung around, flinging her arm up to keep Mup behind her, and Mup felt loved by her again, and protected.
Aunty drifted back to them. Badger stepped in front of Tipper, and everyone listened. Something huge was smashing and crashing through the bushes out there. Someone was fighting in the undergrowth.
Silence fell. Then somewhere out of sight ahead, someone laughed.
Oh, what a terrible sound! It wasn’t like a laugh at all, more the tinkling of some cruel bell in a frozen wilderness of ice. It made Mup want to crawl into her mother’s pocket.
“We need to leave,” whispered Aunty.
There was more crashing, that crystalline laugh again, and then somewhere out there in the trees Crow cawed, angry and defiant and obviously very afraid. Horrified, Mup took a step towards his voice. Her mother grabbed her arm, stopping her. Crow called again, desperate and helpless, and that laugh – that terrible laugh – was all that answered him.
Mup met her mother’s eyes. We can’t leave him.
The next Mup knew they were stalking towards the noise together; she and her mam slipping smoothly through the bushes with the dogs at their heels and Aunty, a fierce ball of light, at their backs.
“Raggedy witches,” warned Mup. She signalled the dogs to stay back, and she and Mam crouched low, peering through brightly coloured leaves at the four men and women who stood at the centre of the wood.
One of the man witches had his arm raised high over his head. He was holding the length of scarlet wool which trailed from Crow’s ankle, and at the end of it Crow fluttered like a frenzied kite, while the witches gazed up at him.
“My mother will kill you!” cawed Crow.
The witches laughed in detached amusement.
The one holding the string smiled as Crow desperately tried to fly away.
“My father will turn y
ou into frogs!” he cawed.
With just a flicker of anger the witch yanked Crow from the air and dashed him to the ground. Leaves and feathers flew up at the impact, and the witches stepped back as a boy – no older than Mup – was revealed in the place where the raven should have been. Mup stared. Was that Crow? Gasping, the boy rolled onto his hands and knees and Mup realized that, yes, it was most certainly Crow – there could be no doubting those large black eyes.
Crow’s a boy, she thought – and somehow that didn’t feel at all surprising.
“Well, well,” said a witch. “It’s the brat.”
Crow, still dazed, tried to crawl away. Mup was shocked at how skinny he was, and how very scruffy when compared to his sleek raven form. His black hair stuck up in unkempt snarls, his old-fashioned frock coat and breeches and fancy shirt were all frayed and grubby. The witches followed as he scrabbled through the leaves, and Mup was overcome with sympathy again, and anger that anyone would treat him so badly.
“We should arrest you for unlawful speech,” said one of the witches. “But tell us where your people are, and we will let you go free.”
“Go suck a newt,” gasped Crow, still crawling.
“Unlawful!” cried another witch. “Where are your rhymes?” She stamped onto the scarlet wool which trailed from Crow’s ankle, and he jerked to a halt, sprawling face first into the leaves.
Crow let out a sob – just a tiny one – before snarling and struggling to his knees. That was enough for Mup and before her mother could stop her, before she’d even really thought about it, she had leapt to her feet and was dashing out into the clearing, yelling, “You get away from my friend, you hear me? You leave my friend alone!”
The witches lifted their terrible faces, and Mup slid to a crouching halt at their feet, spreading an arm across Crow’s back and staring up into their horrible, dark, bottomless eyes.
“What a quaint and colourful little madam,” murmured one of them. “What a glittering, tinselly, silly little scrap.” The witch reached a pale hand – apparently fascinated by Mup’s sparkly dress – and Mam yelled, “Get away from my daughter!”
The witches swung to see the new threat.
Mup bent over Crow’s ankle, horrified at how the wool was biting into his scrawny flesh. It was barely visible, so deeply had it sunk – she hated to think how much it must be hurting him.
Begone the Raggedy Witches Page 5