Begone the Raggedy Witches

by Celine Kiernan

  Mup turned and looked back into the cell. It had felt very large when all she could see was darkness, but it wasn’t large at all. Crow and Tipper and Badger were huddled together at the back wall. In his sleep, Crow had thrown his arms around Tipper’s neck. Tipper had his head on Crow’s shoulder. Badger curled around them both, a stiff old, grey-muzzled knight. Mup felt very protective of them, and her anger faded. This must be how her mam felt when she looked at her and Tipper.

  Mup sat down slowly. Her mam hadn’t left her, not really. They’d been taken from each other, they’d been separated. Before that they’d been working together. Acting as a team to find Mup’s dad, who had also been taken. No one abandoned me, thought Mup, gazing at Crow. No one purposely left me on my own.

  She remembered Mam standing at the steps of Sealgaire’s wagon, smiling gravely up at her. “Keep yourself out of trouble,” she’d said. “Take care of your little brother.” And she’d trusted Mup to do just that, she’d believed in her to do just that. Mup closed her eyes, knowing once again that Mam was out there, trusting that she would come for her. I’m here, Mam, she thought. I’m being brave. I’m taking care of everyone. I’ll do my best until you get to us.

  A soft noise in the corridor caused her to shrink carefully back against the wall. Someone was approaching from the foggy dimness, someone tall. They held in their outstretched hand a luminous orb which cast a dim glow of light on the walls and ceiling. Every couple of feet this orb dripped, for all the world like a candle dripping melting wax. When a drip hit the floor, it glowed like a tiny flame. Peering past the advancing figure, Mup could see a series of these luminous points stretching back into the corridor, leaving a path through the impenetrable darkness.

  The tall figure came to a halt at the door of the cell. It was Crow’s mother. Now that she was closer, Mup could see that she wasn’t holding the orb of light but making it – gently rubbing the fingertips of one hand together to generate an almost solid bubble of illumination. The light brightened her expressionless features as she hunted in the folds of her flowing robe. She did not notice Mup cowering on the other side of the bars. Mup crept slowly backwards, as Magda produced a huge key from her pocket, clicked the lock and swung open the cell door.

  “Boy,” she said.

  At the back of the cell, Crow startled, and Mup saw him clutch Tipper and Badger. All of them were awake now, staring wide-eyed at the coldly illuminated woman standing in the corridor.

  “I have made a path for you,” said the witch, “that you might find your way out.”

  Crow leapt to his feet, his pinched face bright with joy. “Mam!” he cried. “You came for me!” He ran across the room, his arms out to hug her. But before he could touch her, his mother held up her free hand and brought him to a halt.

  “I want you to leave me alone,” she said. “I want you to go, and never come back.”

  She waited a moment, perhaps to witness the crumbling of hope from her son’s face. Then she turned her back and walked away. Her orb cast a cold bubble of illumination as she ascended into the darkness, then was gone. Crow was left in the feeble light of the pathway she had made for him, staring after her.

  “Mam,” he whispered.

  Quietly, Mup stood up into her girl-shape. Without her see-in-the-dark hare-vision, the corridor shrank to just the thin trail of light cast by the luminous path. The darkness outside it was absolute, but Mup now knew that the darkness contained rooms and doors, long corridors of empty stone. She knew that, with an effortless twist of her will, she could easily find her way through it. Tipper and Badger came to her sides, their soft muzzles touching her hands.

  Crow stood with his back to them all, his shoulders rigid, his gaze fixed on the emptiness ahead.

  “We’ll be your family, Crow,” said Mup.

  Crow spun to her. His eyes were dry of tears.

  Mup faltered at his fierce expression. “I mean…” she stammered. “I mean, we’ll be your family if you want us to be. I know we’re a little bit strange. Mam can be kind of scary and Dad isn’t around much. Also, Aunty is a ghost and Tipper is a dog, but maybe if you gave us a try you might…”

  She didn’t get a chance to say any more because Crow flung himself at her, and her words were choked by how hard he hugged her.

  “I … I’d like to try and find my dad now,” said Mup at last. “Is that OK?”

  Crow nodded against her shoulder.

  “It means going into the dark, though. Is that OK?”

  Crow stepped away from her, fiercely wiping his eyes and nodding.

  “Tipper? Badger? Do you trust me to lead you through the dark?”

  The dogs licked her fingers. Yes.

  “OK,” said Mup.

  She dropped into her hare-shape, and turned her back on the path Crow’s mother had left for them. The corridor stretched ahead for eight or nine feet before fading to grey. The cells on either side were empty. Mup hopped forward, sniffing the air for signs of danger, or maybe traces of her dad’s aftershave.

  Tipper’s voice came from behind her. “Mup? How is we meant to follow, if we can’t see you?”

  She turned to find the others standing where she’d left them, peering blindly after her without moving. “Can’t you see in the dark when you are animals?” she asked.

  As one they shook their heads. The light of Magda’s path glowed dimly behind them, making a silhouette of their anxious little huddle. Mup hopped to the nearest little splotch of light. The others watched as she tentatively touched it. Her paw came up glowing, as if covered with luminous paint.

  “Come here, guys,” she said. “I have an idea.”

  * * *

  Corridor after corridor of cold, dark cells stretched ahead of them and behind them. All empty, all silent except for the soft padding of their paws and the tap-tap of Crow’s shoes as they moved from room to room.

  Where are all the prisoners? thought Mup. Where is my dad? She shuddered and looked back the way she’d come.

  Tipper, Badger and Crow were following close behind. Streaked with Magda’s paint, they were glowing like so many strange little ghosts. Mup had painted her long ears and her face so that her friends could see her in the dark. Every place they touched, they left neat paw prints or handprints that glowed behind them, a faint smudged trail leading back the way they’d come. It would not be difficult to find their way out.

  Crow kept looking back at this trail, fretting. He had told Mup that he was worried the witches would see it, and follow it, and find them. But Mup knew the witches rarely came this deep any more. She found it hard to explain how she knew this. It was as if the stones themselves were sharing their knowledge. All Mup had to do was press her paws to the ground and concentrate, and all the journeys that had ever been taken here, all the paths ever trod, spread themselves out before her as clear as a network of maps.

  The stitcher of worlds, she thought. The finder of paths.

  She became more certain with every step that this still, sad, empty darkness was rarely disturbed. Whoever the witches brought down here – to the very depths of the castle – was left here, and forgotten about, and never mentioned nor thought of again.

  This is what the queen would have done to us, she thought. Me and Crow and Badger and Tipper. No one would ever have found us. No one would ever have come for us. We’d have been left all alone in this darkness, and we’d never have been seen again.

  “I smell Daddy,” whispered Tipper suddenly, his eyes brightening in the strange light.

  Mup paused, sniffing the air.

  Crow sniffed too. “Does he smell like damp?” he asked.

  “No,” cried Mup in excitement, already turning and leading the way. “He smells like Christmas trees!”

  “And warm milk!” woofed Tipper, pushing past Crow to follow on her heels.

  “And toast!”

  “And butter!”

  “And apple tart!”

  They ran the corridor, shouting out all the happy
things their dad smelled of, with Badger and Crow following warily behind, until they came to a halt at an unfurnished cell. Inside, a lone occupant sat on the floor, staring in bewilderment at the glowing creatures who suddenly filled his doorway.

  “Well,” said Dad in his familiar voice. “Hello.”

  “Dad?” asked Mup. “What are you doing just sitting there?”

  Her dad looked down at himself, and then all around him at the empty cell. “I think,” he said, in mild surprise, “I think I’m just waiting.” He didn’t seem at all unhappy, though his face was bruised and his hair all tangled, and the flight suit he still wore was torn and filthy and damp. Mup got the impression that he had simply been sitting there in the dark, perfectly content, until they’d turned up to surprise him with their light. The door to his cell wasn’t even closed.

  “Dad,” she said. “Don’t you want to escape?”

  He thought deeply. “Do I?” he asked.

  “Yes!” barked Tipper. “You do!”

  “Oh,” said Dad. “Well … OK. If you say so.”

  “He’s under a glamour,” whispered Crow.

  “A what?”

  “A spell. I’d wager he doesn’t even know where he is.”

  Mup hopped into the room and looked up into her dad’s pleasant, puzzled face. “It’s OK, Dad,” she said. “We’re here to rescue you.”

  Dad nodded, smiling, and peered past her. “Who’s this?” he asked.

  “That’s Badger, our dog.”

  “And this?”

  “That’s Tipper. He’s your son.”

  “Oh. And he’s a dog too, is he?”

  “Yes. Sometimes.”

  “And who’s that, lurking at the door?”

  “That’s Crow. He’s a boy, sometimes. He’s going to be our brother one day…”

  Crow greeted this observation with a scowl.

  “Though, perhaps he hasn’t quite made up his mind about that yet,” added Mup quickly.

  “Pleased to meet you, Crow,” said Dad, rising to his feet and offering his hand. Crow flinched back as if suspecting some trick, but Dad just kept his hand out, smiling expectantly, and eventually Crow came forward. As he and Dad shook hands, Mup was pleased to see some of the suspicion melt from Crow’s face.

  To her surprise, Dad turned his questioning smile back to her. “And who are you, little rabbit?”

  “I’m Mup,” she cried indignantly. “Your daughter.”

  “She not a wabbit,” barked Tipper. “She’s a hare.”

  Dad nodded and smiled. “I see. I see,” he said, but it was obvious he was just being polite.

  “He’ll be more sensible when you get him home,” Crow assured her. “Though I’m not sure how we’re going to manage it,” he said. “It’s not like there’s a back door we can sneak him out of.”

  “We’re just going to have to go back up into the castle,” said Mup. “Trust that your mam’s path will lead us somewhere safe.”

  They all looked upwards, as if they could see through the many fathoms of stone ceiling to the queen and all her witches, who prowled the world above.

  “And then what?” whispered Tipper.

  “We … we’ll think of that when we get there,” said Mup firmly, shepherding them out into the corridor. “Let’s go.”

  To her surprise, Dad shrank back from the threshold of the door. “I’d better not. That woman … the old woman who put me here … I don’t think she wants me to leave.” He shuddered, obviously afraid. “I–I don’t want to make her angry again…”

  Mup hopped back into the cell. “Dad?”

  But her Dad shook his head, and retreated to the wall, and turned his face away.

  Mup stood up into her girl-shape. The room shrank immediately to utter blackness. She couldn’t see her dad at all, and she was filled with panic suddenly at how dark it was and how cold and confined, and how deeply underground they were.

  A glow of light appeared at the corner of her eye as Badger, Crow and Tipper returned to the door of the cell. Their luminous faces shed only a hint of light, and Mup was filled with astonishment and admiration as she realized just how little her friends had been able to see while she’d been hopping along in happy security with her special vision.

  “Thanks for coming with me, guys,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t mind getting out now,” grumbled Crow.

  Dad shuffled behind her and Mup lifted her luminous hands, bringing him dimly into view.

  “Dad,” she said gently.

  He glanced at her over his shoulder, then turned towards her as he registered her newly transformed face. “Oh,” he said. “You’re … you’re a little girl.”

  “Sometimes I am,” she said.

  She held her hand out to him, and after a moment’s hesitation he took it. “Come on, Dad,” she said, lifting her free arm up like a feeble torch to light his way. “Let’s go.”

  They made their way up and up, following the smudged trail of their own footprints. This time it was the dogs and Crow who led the way through the maze of corridors, while Mup stumbled after them, holding her dad’s hand tightly, her eyes strained against the pressing gloom. Somewhere in the darkest recesses, before they reached the brighter trail left by Crow’s mother, Aunty began muttering and stirring within the confines of her locket. The darkness around them began to shift and shimmer with ghostly replies.

  “What’s that noise?” whispered her dad.

  Mup clutched his hand tighter. “I think it’s Aunty,” she said. “Talking to the dead.”

  “Aunty,” mused her dad. “I knew an Aunty once. She was very kind to my wife.”

  “Walk faster, Dad.”

  “She hadn’t much time for me, though. Not once the babies were here. She was done with me then, I think … though I still liked her.”

  “Keep walking.”

  “My wife loved her very much.”

  “Keep walking.”

  “Who … who are you again, little girl?”

  Mup just tugged his hand, desperate to hurry his pace. The locket was buzzing now. The stones in the walls gasped and grated. In the darkness, dust sifted down.

  The ghosts are angry, thought Mup, hurrying to catch up with the dogs and Crow. “We did nothing to you!” she cried out. “It wasn’t us!”

  “My fault,” whispered Aunty. “Mine, mine, mine.”

  “No!” cried Mup, clutching the pendant with her free hand to silence it, running now through the growing frenzy of noise. “Shhh!”

  “Follow her. Follow,” whispered Aunty. “Follow the hare into the light.”

  “Aunty! No!”

  “I smell outside!” barked Tipper, and they skidded around the corner to find themselves looking up a long flight of stone steps to a distant patch of sunlight. Stunned by the sweet draught of fresh air coming from above, the dogs and Crow came to a halt. Mup raced up behind and shoved them urgently up the steps.

  “Climb!” she yelled. “Can’t you hear that noise! The corridor is coming down around us!”

  They scrambled clumsily upwards, Mup dragging Dad in their wake. All around them the stones were jolting and grinding. The locket was burning around her neck. Ghost voices were wailing now, from deep below, howling out their rage. Mup ran up and up, her face turned to the little patch of sunlight, and as she climbed, she became aware of other sounds, not so ghostly, coming from the world above them: shouts and great concussive boomings; the rush of a storm; a singing like that of wind through telephone wires; and above it all, a woman’s voice – huge, magnificent, powerful – commanding:

  “GIVE THEM TO ME. GIVE THEM TO ME. GIVE ME WHAT IS MINE.”

  They emerged into the castle yard. Wind snatched their hair. Light stunned their eyes. For a moment all five companions – Mup, Crow, the dogs and Dad – were frozen in terror. The yard was filled with hundreds of raggedy witches, all their pale faces turned upwards, their arms pointed high as they calmly shot fire into the sky. There was a sense of vast movement
overhead, storm clouds boiling, perhaps, or a huge figure prowling.

  Mup realized that the storm which raged around them was singing: a beautiful, terrible harmony of voices which seemed to come from somewhere outside the walls.

  Combined magics, she thought in awe.

  The song was creating the storm, and the storm was unpicking the defences of the castle. Howling through the yard where silence had reigned for so long, it was lifting the very stones themselves from the walls and shooting them into the sky.

  Mup’s grandmother stood in the centre of the yard, her arms stretched to the clouds, her face taut with concentration. She was tracking something up there with her outstretched hands – the same way a hunter traces the movement of a bird with a gun.

  Mam, thought Mup with a jolt. She’s hunting Mam!

  “No!” Mup yelled, releasing her father’s hand and running out into the yard. “MAM!”

  But her voice was a little thread against the great choir of the storm. Not even the raggedy witches looked her way.

  “Muuuup!” howled Tipper. “What am you dooooing?”

  She waved him back, gesturing for Crow and Dad to keep the dogs by the wall and out of range of the flying stones. Out in the yard, the queen tensed suddenly, and crouched, and flexed her hands. She’d spotted her prey in the clouds above.

  “Shoot her!” yelled Crow to Mup, struggling to keep Badger from running into the fray. “Shoot the queen!”

  Instead, Mup slapped her hands to her temples. She closed her eyes. She became very quiet.

  On some level she could still feel the storm whipping at her hair and her clothes. She could hear the choir lifting the stones. But that was far away. She was a calm stillness at the heart of the chaos. She was the bridge, she was the conduit, she was the stitcher of worlds. Mup reached her thoughts to the great creature prowling the clouds above her, and closed the gap between its mind and hers.

  Mam, she thought.

  There was a pause in the movement overhead.

  Move, urged Mup. Now.

  And though the creature above her was so strong now, and so angry that it hardly knew what lay below it any more, it did as Mup told it. The queen’s lightning zapped the air where the creature had been only moments before, missing it by a fraction and turning the clouds there to steam. There was a sense of the great creature turning to its companions, of it sweeping up its arm. Draw back a moment, it seemed to say, there’s something down there I don’t quite—