Begone the Raggedy Witches

by Celine Kiernan

  The sparks retreated into her fingertips.

  “Ma’am,” said Magda. “This is your granddaughter.”

  “Granddaughter?” said the queen. “Granddaughter?” She made a show of peering at Mup. Her face was Aunty Boo’s face, but without any of Aunty Boo’s dry humour or kindness: a cold face, a sneering face. She tutted. “There seems to be nothing grand about this daughter that I can see. What even is she?”

  “She’s a girl!” woofed Tipper as if the queen honestly needed to be told.

  “She’s a sad little, silly little, useless scrap of nothing, if appearances are anything to go by,” huffed the queen. “It’s beyond comprehension that she’s even remotely related to me.” She addressed herself to Mup for the first time, leaning forward in her chair so that her long white hair fell around her face. “Look at you – you mixed-up jumble of human wastage – with your little circus troupe of friends and your rabbit hat and your silly dress. Where exactly do you think you are, a tea party?”

  That’s not fair, thought Mup. I’m not wastage, and I like my friends and what does my dress have to do with anything? But her cheeks flared, and she felt useless and ridiculous, and she wished – despite herself – that she’d worn something more sensible than a tutu and green frog wellies to come and rescue her dad. She found herself thinking, Maybe then the queen might have liked me.

  The queen sat back, bitterly satisfied with herself. “It’s obvious my sister has ruined your mother, if you’re anything to go by, you frilly little doll.”

  And that made Mup angry again. Because she knew for a fact that Mam was wonderful and that Aunty had not ruined her – and who cared what this stranger thought about anything? Mup had power in her hands. Mup was here for a reason. (And she could dress whatever way she wanted to rescue her dad, damn it! And she loved her friends and that was that.)

  “Give me my dad,” she said.

  The queen laughed. “Or what? What will you do if I say no?”

  “She’ll zap you!” barked Tipper enthusiastically. “Like she done the birdy-man! And I’ll snap you with my teeth like I done the nasty cat-lady who scratched me!”

  The queen lost all her amusement. “Zap?” she said. “Snap?”

  Magda loomed over Mup. “That was you?” she hissed. “You were the one who burned my brother?”

  The queen’s attention snapped to Magda. “Brother?” she said.

  Magda faltered and stepped back from Mup. Her face went as pale as the streak in her hair. “N–no,” she stammered. “I–I mean…”

  “But, Magda,” said the queen, her voice suddenly smooth as silk, “you said ‘brother’. Am I not your only family, Magda? Are you not loyal to me? Are you not faithful only to me?”

  “No, Majesty. I mean, yes! YES, Majesty. I am loyal to you only. Only you, Majesty.”

  “Because you took an oath, you know.”

  “Oh, I know, Majesty.” The witch held up her hands, almost begging. “And I meant every word, Majesty. There is only you. You are everything. All else is cast away.”

  “So who is this ‘brother’ the tinselly scrap is supposed to have burned?”

  “I didn’t burn anyone,” said Mup. But even as she said it, her hands tingled with the memory of pressing themselves to Sealgaire’s chest; of shooting fire so that he and she were flung away from each other.

  “He deserved it!” barked Tipper. “He was being mean to you.”

  “Oh no,” whispered Mup, staring at her hands. “He was only trying to help…” She remembered quickly covering the imprint of her own hands on Sealgaire’s chest. She had seen yet not allowed herself to see the evidence of the damage she had done to him. “I didn’t mean it,” she whispered – but she had. She had meant it. At the time she had only wanted to escape the grip of whoever was holding her. In the heat of battle she had recognized only an enemy – and so she had hurt someone who was trying to help her.

  Tipper was very excited now and barking at the top of his voice. “He was a mean, mean birdy-man! He was mean to Aunty and he was mean to Crow too!”

  “Crow?” said the queen. “Crow?” She turned her attention to Crow, who had stayed very quiet through all this, clutched in Magda’s hand, staring up into her now panic-stricken face.

  At the sight of him, the queen smiled a thin amused smile. “Say it isn’t so,” she said.

  Magda tried to hide Crow behind her back.

  The queen lifted very cold eyes to meet hers. “Magda,” she said. “Put that raven onto the ground and make him take his boy-form.”

  The witch shook her head, like a frightened child being accused of something they hadn’t done. “I didn’t bring him here, Majesty. If I had known…”

  “Put. The raven. Onto. The floor.”

  Reluctantly Magda obeyed. The stone around his foot clinked as she placed him on the ground. The queen regarded him with malevolent glee, but Crow couldn’t seem to take his eyes from Magda’s face. Above the leather band constricting his beak, his round, dark eyes were full of tears.

  “Let’s see you,” said the queen.

  When Crow continued to just stare, the queen pointed her finger. “Let’s see you.”

  With a zap, Crow’s bonds were gone and he was revealed: a small scruffy boy standing on the polished marble floor. “Mother,” he cried to Magda. “Mam!”

  Oh no! thought Mup, in horror. Was this awful person really his mother?

  Crow held his hands out to Magda.

  The witch winced, and the queen grinned. “Oh, Magda,” she said. “Be sure your weaknesses will seek you out! Have you kept this child hidden like a kitten in a cupboard? All these years, have you cherished the thought of him way down deep in your sentimental soul?”

  “Where’s Dad?” cried Crow. “Mam, where is he? Sealgaire said you arrested him!”

  The queen was delighted. “Where’s my daddy?” she whined in mocking imitation. “Where’s he gone? What a baby!” She laughed, and all her witches laughed with her, the horrible crystalline sound bouncing off the stone surfaces of the room like ice shattering.

  Under the sting of this laughter, Magda’s face grew expressionless and she drew herself up.

  The queen spoke slyly to her. “You can always go back, Magda. If you want. You can have your kitten. You can once again be part of the squirming rabble.” She spread her hands generously. “Just give up the use of magic and I’ll let you walk away.”

  Magda met the queen’s eyes. “I would rather die,” she said.

  The queen smiled her awful smile. She turned to Crow. “Your daddy is dead,” she said.

  Crow grabbed Magda’s cloak, begging her to contradict the queen. But Magda would not look at him.

  “Your father brought it on himself,” Magda said. “He was a traitor and a rebel.”

  “And your mammy knows what to do with rebels,” said the queen. “Don’t you, Magda?”

  “Yes,” said Magda, and again she said, “He brought it on himself.”

  Crow began to cry.

  “You killed Crow’s dad,” gasped Mup. “You horrible person!”

  She leapt forward, not knowing what she intended to do, wanting only to punish this awful cold woman who stood over her weeping son like he meant nothing at all. She was caught and restrained by the witches. They yanked her arms over her head, so that the sparks that gushed from her palms blasted harmlessly upwards, where they left scorch marks on the ceiling.

  The queen regarded Mup more closely than before. “Interesting,” she said. “For all her frivolous exterior, there’s something there. A little seed of potential perhaps, not yet smothered by my sister.” She leaned forward. She flicked a hand. “Let me see what you are,” she said.

  Mup felt something jolt inside her – something rising like a bubble within – and suddenly she was on all fours looking down at her long, narrow paws, the angry face of a hare reflected back at her in the shining marble.

  The witches gasped and drew back. The queen recoiled in horro
r.

  “A hare?” she roared. “A stitcher of worlds? In my own family? From my own blood?”

  She rose to her feet, her white hair crackling in rage, her eyes ablaze.

  “There is only one path,” she hissed. “Do you understand? Every other path leads nowhere. I will not have my own blood, issue of my issue, daughter of my daughter, imply otherwise! There is only one way – in magic, in life, in love – and that way is me. All magic comes from me, all love centres on me, all obedience is due to me.”

  She seemed to grow with rage, and Mup scampered away, her sharp nails skittering on the floor. In her panic, she found herself entangled in the legs and chains of the snarling dogs. She tried to change back into a girl but was stuck in her animal form, from fear, perhaps, or some terrible will of the queen.

  “Get her out of my sight!” roared the queen. “Corrupt, polluted, irregular girl! Lock her away!”

  Mup was lifted, bucking and kicking and biting with her sharp teeth. The world went dark as someone wrapped her in their thick cloak. Still struggling, she was carried outside. Sunlight came prickling through the fabric and footsteps rang from stone as she was carried down and down and down many sunlit steps with the dogs barking close behind.

  There was no sound from Crow.

  Mup’s angry cries echoed from high walls as she was carried across the open yard. Then there was darkness: the feeling of damp space that had never known light. Sounds closed in. Coldness. The dogs grew quiet. Mup stilled, listening to the jogging breath of the people around her, and the clink of the dogs’ chains. Tipper whimpered.

  They went down and down, the air growing colder even through the fabric that bundled her. They came to a halt. There came the rattle of keys. Metal shrieked against metal in the dark as something like a great gate opened reluctantly. Mup was shaken violently free of the cloak and she rolled across a damp stone floor, the breath knocked from her.

  The sound of the gate came again, screeching closed even as she scrambled to her feet. Mup ran for it, a girl once more, but by the time she’d crossed the darkness, the witches were gone.

  There was a familiar chattering of beak behind her.

  Mup turned, her back pressed to the metal bars of the cell door. She could see nothing. The darkness was complete.

  “Crow?” she whispered. “T–Tipper?”

  Suddenly the air was filled with the rush of wings and Mup ducked and raised her hands as some panicked thing brushed her face. “Crow!” she cried as he began battering himself against the unyielding bars of the gate. “Stop!” But he was already off again, tumbling frantically into the dark. Mup heard him hit the ceiling, fall, then flutter back into the air. He was silent except for the desperate beating of his wings, and the thud thud thud of his body against the cell walls.

  There came an especially loud thud and the sounds ceased abruptly.

  Tipper’s voice came from the darkness, small and terrified. “Has the birdy hurted himself?”

  Mup groped her way forward. It wasn’t long until she met the back wall of the cell, the stones cold and damp against her outstretched hands.

  “Crow?” she whispered.

  Her foot bumped something soft. She knelt, and felt the worn cloth of a threadbare coat, a skinny arm, a trembling back. “Crow,” she whispered again. He was lying at the base of the wall. “Are you hurt?” He did not answer, but she could tell from the shaking of his body that he was crying. “You’re not alone, Crow,” she said, though she too had started crying now. “You’re not alone.”

  She tried to pull him into her arms, but he elbowed her away.

  “Crow,” she said, almost pleading. She chanced putting her hand on his arm. He curled tighter, but he didn’t draw any further from her than that, and so she sank to the stones, her back against the wall, her hand on his quivering shoulder.

  The witches must have removed the dogs’ chains because Mup did not hear them creep forward, and they gave her a fright when their warm breath first hit her face. Badger licked her cheek – a little doggy kiss – then he and Tipper lay their warm bodies on either side of her and Crow, protecting them from the cold.

  Mup pulled Tipper in so that she was hugging him with one arm. Badger lay his head on her lap. “Don’t worry, everyone,” she said, the tears running down her face invisible in the dark. “Don’t worry. I’ll think of something.”

  After a very long time, Crow cried himself to sleep. Then Tipper fell asleep, and soon Badger was snoring softly. Mup was left wide awake. “Aunty Boo,” she whispered. “Are you still here?”

  The pendant flickered, its glow barely penetrating the dark.

  “Aunty, I was the one who hurt Sealgaire. It was my fault he couldn’t sit up properly, and fell so far, and … and died.”

  The pendant sighed. “Poor Sealgaire…”

  “I’m sorry I hurt him, Aunty. I’m so sorry. I want not to have done it. I was scared. I didn’t know who he was. I…”

  “That’s the thing about power. It has consequences outside of yourself – you have to be very sure before you use it that you’re doing something you won’t regret. Because once you’ve used it, there’s no going back.”

  Mup hugged Tipper tighter, thinking how little her regret meant to Sealgaire; how her being sorry changed nothing for him. She shivered. Tipper whimpered in his sleep.

  “Aunty,” said Mup. “I don’t know where Mam is. What if … what if she can’t find us? What about poor Tipper? What about Badger and Crow? What’ll become of them, down here in the dark?”

  “Most people who end up here never see the light of day again.”

  Mup groaned in horror. “Don’t say that, Aunty.”

  The pendant sighed. “I abandoned them. All those brave souls too stubborn or too different to conform to my sister’s rules. So many of them died here. So many ghosts in these stones.”

  Mup clutched the pendant at her neck, suddenly terrified that the darkness might begin to swarm with the luminous dead.

  The pendant pulsed slightly, and it felt as if Aunty was smiling now, gently smiling, at the small girl imprisoned in the dark, in the cold and the damp beneath miles of stone. “I can’t pretend I’m not delighted at how much you upset my sister. My darling Pearl, a hare! A stitcher of worlds.”

  “What are you talking about?” cried Mup. “The stitcher of worlds? I can’t even sew!”

  “Oh, child,” tutted Aunty. “Not sewing. Stitching! Stitching. You are a hare. A border creature. Neither quite one thing or another, the best of all worlds, and always only ever yourself. Hares see both sides, they find their own path. No wonder my sister hates and fears you.”

  “Does she really hate me?”

  “She hates everyone, Pearl. No one’s ever good enough for her. You’d grind yourself to dust trying to please her. There’s always only ever been one way to do things with her. ‘My way or the hangman’, if you know what I mean.”

  “A bit like you with Mam?”

  There was a long silence from the pendant. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do,” said Mup.

  “I love your mam! I’ve always done what’s best for her!”

  “I–I know,” said Mup, starting to wish she’d not said anything.

  “Sometimes she doesn’t know what’s good for her, is all. I had to keep a lid on her a little bit… Stop things flying out of control.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been better, though,” ventured Mup, “to just trust Mam, and teach her how to be herself?”

  “She’d never have been able for that!” cried Aunty. “Why are you all so ungrateful all of a sudden? I made you all a lovely life! I know what’s good for you!”

  Mup said nothing. The pendant went very quiet. To Mup’s alarm, Aunty’s light began to fade. “Aunty…? Aunty, I didn’t mean it. You’re always very nice to Mam. She loves you! I love you too.” Mup shook the darkening pendant. “Don’t be angry!”

  “I need a moment to myself,” said Aunty faintly
. “I–I need to think…”

  The light fluttered, then died entirely. Aunty’s voice died with it, and no matter how hard Mup shook the pendant, neither the light nor Aunty came back.

  Darkness pressed in, cold and impenetrable.

  For a moment Mup was too scared to move, then she was angry. Really angry.

  How could Aunty have just left her like that? Come to think of it, how could her mam have left her? And her dad? They were adults, for goodness’ sake! Weren’t they meant to keep their daughter safe? Weren’t they meant to take care of her – not leave her stuck in a dungeon underground with poor neglected Crow, and poor innocent Tipper, and poor Badger, who was too old for things like this?

  Mup was suddenly too angry to stay still. If she had to lie there another minute, she’d scream in rage, and Mup knew this would terrify her friends. She would rather be on her own in the dark than risk upsetting Crow and Tipper any further, so she slipped out from under their warmth and crawled away.

  Face scrunched up, angry tears streaming down her cheeks, Mup could have kept moving for ever, but soon she reached the iron bars of the gate, and had to stop. “I don’t like you,” she whispered to the grandmother who had put her there. “I don’t care if you hate me. You’re wicked and you hurt people and you don’t deserve to be my granny.”

  She closed her hands around the bars of the gate. “What’s wrong with being a hare anyway?” she said. “I like being a hare.” And, as if to prove it, her body became one.

  The world flared to sight in shifting whorls of grey and white.

  What a difference! Mup thought, looking around in wonder. I can see!

  Standing on her hind legs, she examined the iron gate. Its bars were close enough together that even the slimmest animal couldn’t slip through. A heavy lock fastened it tight. Outside, the walls of the narrow corridor seeped damp. To Mup’s new vision all was dim and colourless, like trying to peer at a black-and-white movie through a thick fog.