Begone the Raggedy Witches

by Celine Kiernan

  Mup scrambled to her hands and knees, staring after them. “Did you hear that, Crow? I think they were witches running away from the battle! The way out must be close by!”

  Thrilled, Mup transformed into a hare. The tunnel immediately became visible to her. She could see the fleeing witches disappearing around a far corner. Mup bounded after them. Rounding the corner, she saw a glimmer of light coming from a sloping tunnel ahead, fresh air tickled her whiskers.

  “It is the way out, Crow! We found it!”

  Overhead, a muffled boom shook the castle. Dust puffed and pebbles dribbled downwards. More footsteps came racing up the tunnel. More raggedy witches running in the dark. Mup pulled herself in tight against the wall as they sped past. One of them glanced her way, and she realized that they could see her, but they did nothing about it, only ran onwards, desperate to be gone. Mup stood on her hind legs, and watched them leave. She was so close to escape!

  She bounded back to Crow’s side. He groaned when she shook him but did not open his eyes.

  “Crow,” she cried, shaking him again. “Oh, Crow, please change back into a raven. I can’t carry you otherwise!”

  “Leave him behind.”

  Startled, Mup looked up into the cold face of Crow’s mother. She was limping along the corridor, her steps making no noise. She seemed perfectly capable of seeing in the dark, and she regarded Mup and Crow with no expression at all. Mup cowered against the wall, thinking she’d come to fetch them for the queen, but the witch just sneered at her, and limped past.

  “You’re running away?” gasped Mup. “You’re abandoning your queen?”

  “The war is lost,” said the witch, “though the queen seems yet to realize it. I’ve no urge to stick around and be made mincemeat of by rebels and rabble-rousers. You’d best run, too. The queen still thinks she can use you as leverage against your mother. She has sent hunters after you.”

  “Crow can’t run!”

  The witch did not even glance back. “You can’t save everyone. Only the very young or the very stupid think otherwise.”

  “Carry him for me!” cried Mup, springing after her. “We’ll outrun the hunters. I’ll guide you on the safest paths. You know I can do it. I’m the hare. I’m the stitcher of worlds. The paths talk to me.”

  The witch just kept walking.

  “The rebels are not going to be kind to your people after this war!” cried Mup.

  Almost at the corner, the witch came to a halt, and turned to glare silently down at her.

  “If–if you help me now,” said Mup, “my mam will help you afterwards.”

  “I have no guarantee of that.”

  “I guarantee it.”

  “I have done terrible things in service of the queen.”

  “I know that.”

  “Terrible things. Do you honestly believe you’ll be permitted to absolve me of them?”

  Mup stayed silent at that.

  The witch bent to look her in the eye, assessing her. “You had better not be making promises you don’t intend to keep,” she said, and she swooped past to collect Crow from where he lay.

  Mup led the way up the sloping tunnel, and emerged from a small arch into a dense forest whipped by storm. As she stood up into her girl-form, the witch emerged behind her, Crow unconscious in her arms. She squinted up at the sky, the wind thrashing her hair and her layers of cloaks into a frenzy.

  “I don’t understand,” yelled Mup, gripping her hat against the storm. “Why would the queen just leave an entrance open in the side of her castle like this? Anyone could get in!”

  “Look again,” said the witch.

  Mup looked. All she could see was a vast expanse of blank wall stretching left and right into the trees. The door they had just exited was nowhere to be seen.

  “It’s invisible!”

  “Besides which,” said the witch, “it is only an exit. No one can go back through it without the queen’s key.” She shifted Crow in her arms like a not-very-heavy sack of grain, briefly scanned the wind-whipped trees, and started walking. “This way,” she said.

  Mup stayed where she was, sniffing the stormy air.

  After a few paces, the witch looked back. “This way,” she repeated.

  “Hush,” said Mup. “I’m concentrating.”

  She dropped into her hare-shape, and once again sniffed. Instantly she gagged. The air was foul – filled with death and hatred and horror; filled with rage and jealousy. It was the smell of war, and it hurt. Mup squeezed her eyes tight, clenched her paws against the desire to run, and forced herself to straighten. She sniffed again, searching. The witch took an impatient step towards her. But just then, Mup found what she was looking for, a faint, lovely trace on the storm: milk and Christmas trees, butter and toast.

  She took off running.

  Through the trees, and down a path and around a corner, just in time to see her dad swinging a punch. He had Tipper cradled in one arm, and was spinning as he fought, trying to keep him out of the reach of his assailants. Badger circled, back to back with him, snarling and snapping. Four raggedy witches stood around them in a ring. They kept dodging Dad’s punches and Badger’s snaps, that familiar not-quite-smile on their mask-like faces. Mup could tell that the witches were just toying with them. Big as Dad was, and brave as Badger was, physical strength and courage were no match for witches.

  Why are they doing this? she thought, transforming to a girl even as she ran. Their kingdom is about to fall and they waste time tormenting a powerless man and a baby. What possible use is this to them? But looking at their faces, Mup knew the witches were doing it because it gave them pleasure. Because they could. They really are like cats, she thought.

  She leapt through the air, snarling. “Leave my dad alone!”

  One of the witches turned. He looked more offended than alarmed at the interruption of their sport. Then he twisted his hand in the air and everything froze.

  Mup, Dad, Tipper, Badger – as if caught in a bubble of time – stopped moving.

  Dad was frozen mid-punch, his face scrunched in anger. Badger was half off the ground, his teeth snapping empty air. Tipper had tears frozen on his cheeks. All were perfectly still, all untouched by the roaring wind that thrashed the witches’ hair and clothes.

  The witches left their little circle to come and stand around Mup, looking up as she snarled down at them from mid-leap. One of them touched her outstretched hand. “This is the creature the queen sent us to find,” he said. His voice was like a knife, making Mup want to wince. Still she could not move.

  “Let’s take her.” And they reached to pluck Mup from the air.

  “BEGONE!” roared a voice from the path.

  A flare of green light blossomed from that direction. It swept over Mup, releasing her as it hurtled the startled witches backwards through the air. The green light freed Dad and Badger and Tipper too, and they stumbled from their frozen positions, gasping.

  The witches bounced from tree trunks and smashed into bushes. They slammed to the ground, and lay there moving feebly like dazed beetles.

  Crow’s mother stalked down from the path, her free hand still upraised and crackling with leftover power. She regarded Dad, Tipper and Badger with distaste. “Am I to carry these too?” she asked.

  “No,” snapped Mup, impatiently scrambling to her feet. “Dad! Come on, follow me!”

  Her dad had barely time to rise to his own feet before she was leading him away through the thrashing trees, Tipper clutched protectively in his arms, Badger galloping at his heels. Overhead, the boiling sky was seared with lightning. Thunder roared so loud that Mup ducked.

  Guide me, guide me, she thought, racing through the lashing branches. Guide me, guide me home. She trusted the forest. She trusted it. She gave up to it the image of her little house: cosy with its yellow walls and pretty garden. Her bedroom, and Tipper’s bedroom, the kitchen filled with clutter. She gave up to it the pines that bordered the river, the river that gave way to the sloping hil
l of airy trees, the trees that looked down on the patchwork land that was not part of her world – but was her world at the same time. Guide me there, she thought. Guide me.

  Shadows were rushing through the trees above, now, fighting and screaming. The battle had caught up with them. Just ahead, a figure plummeted from the sky, and crashed through the treetops: man, bird, man, changing as he fell, his wings on fire. He landed in an explosion of smoke. Cats poured from the bushes, and leapt on his thrashing body. Ravens dived from above. More cats came to join the fray. It was impossible to tell who was fighting whom. The blood was terrible. Entire trees burst into flame. Mup ducked her head, dodged off the path and kept running.

  She glanced back. Dad ran like a demon behind her, crashing through bushes, his eyes staring and fixed on her. He had Tipper’s face pressed to his shoulder, preventing him from looking around. At his side, Crow’s mother was walking expressionlessly along. Her enormous strides kept effortless pace with the racing humans. There was fire burning behind her. Her hair and clothes were lashing shadows. Mup saw that Crow was conscious. Jogging limply in his mother’s arms, he stared up at her as if in a wondrous dream. Before Mup turned away, she saw him lift his grubby hand and touch her porcelain face.

  I’m running, Mam, thought Mup. I’m running. And I have everyone with me. I have everyone safe. Come home now, Mam. Come home. We’re heading for the border.

  But wherever her mam was now, or whatever she was, she gave no reply.

  They broke across the border into rain and night, tumbling from the chaos of the magical forest, onto the slick tarmac of a back country road. The mundane world hit them like a slap. Everything was grey: grey clouds, grey rain, grey trees, grey earth. Mup reeled with the drained-out horror of it.

  No, she thought. Oh no. Is this what home was always like?

  Then her dad gripped her shoulder, his eyes looking down into hers with warm concern. “Little girl,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  The colours slammed back into place: the tattered orange of his flight suit, his warm brown skin, the silver leaves over his head, the many shades of slate and blue and green in the storm clouds above.

  Mup took a deep breath of blackberry-scented air. Not less, she thought. Not less. Just different.

  Tipper sobbed on Dad’s shoulder. Snot-smeared and damp, his face was a little puffball of misery. “It’s OK, Tipper,” Mup said. “We’re safe now.”

  “Who says you are safe?” Crow’s mother emerged from the trees. “You are not safe. The war is still raging, can’t you hear it?”

  Mup stepped to the treeline, and listened. Above the steady drumming of the rain, a faint noise was growing. A weird cacophony of yowls and caws, the low, growling boom of thunder.

  “It’s going to cross over,” said Crow’s mother. “You’d best get to shelter.”

  “Mam,” whispered Crow. Still in his mother’s arms, he was gazing up at her, not quite believing his eyes.

  The witch’s face pinched in disgust, and she allowed him to slither to the ground. He wobbled, and staggered, and Mup caught him before he could fall. The witch flexed her arms and shuddered as if shrugging off some unpleasant thing.

  “I did as you asked,” she said to Mup. “Do not forget our bargain.”

  She moved into the trees, then paused at the approaching noises there. “What direction are you going in?” she asked, stepping back onto the road.

  Mup closed her eyes. She listened to the tarmac hissing its strange song against her feet. “Our house is that way,” she said, pointing down the road.

  The witch turned in the opposite direction. “Get indoors as soon as you can,” she said. “I doubt the war will spread far past the border. But who can tell what might happen around a jumbled-up little scrap of nothing like you.” She walked off without a backward glance, a tall woman in the pouring rain, her black clothes gathered tight against the cold.

  Crow struggled free of Mup’s grip and staggered out to watch her go. He swayed as if on the deck of a ship, and Mup figured the world must still be spinning for him.

  “We need to go,” she said gently.

  Crow nodded, but still he stood, watching his mother’s figure recede in the rain.

  The sounds in the woods behind them were growing louder.

  Mup tugged his hand. “Now, Crow.”

  A raven burst angrily from the trees just ahead of them, making the two of them leap. A cat shot from nowhere, sprang improbably high, and wrestled the bird to the ground in a puff of feathers. They tumbled onto the tarmac, pecking and scratching. Suddenly the air was filled with ravens. Twigs and leaves and branches rained down at the violence of their arrival. Cats were everywhere, fighting each other, fighting the birds. The noise was awful.

  “RUN!” cried Mup, and they turned as one and raced as fast as they could along the rain-soaked road as the entire world exploded in yowls and caws and chaos.

  Incredibly, Mup’s house was just around the bend.

  “I know this place!” cried Dad.

  The front door was open, golden light spilling onto the storm-tossed lawn. Mup ran, her arms up, her head ducked, the battle raging around her. Up the lawn, across the drive, into the hall and – SLAM! – the front door was shut.

  They huddled in the hall as the house rattled and the windows shook. Things thudded, dead and heavy, against the roof.

  “This is my home,” said Dad. He looked at Mup. “You and this baby are my family!”

  “Yes,” said Mup.

  Crow just stared all about him, clearly out of his depth.

  Still carrying Tipper, Dad began to hurry from room to room, locking windows. Badger stayed with Mup as she bolted the front door. Dad dashed from the bedroom and into the kitchen, trailing Tipper’s howls behind him like a siren. Realizing what Dad was about to do, Mup ran after him. He had flung himself at the back door, and was struggling with the key. Mup snatched it from him before he could turn it in the lock.

  “That’s Mam’s door,” she yelled over Tipper’s howls. “She’s going to come home through it.”

  “There’s only witches out there, Mup. We can’t let witches in the house!”

  But Mup kept the key. “That’s Mam’s door,” she said.

  She went and sat at the kitchen table, the key clutched in her hand. Outside, the battle raged, but she wasn’t afraid any more. “It’ll be OK, Dad,” she said. “The storm will be over soon. Then Mam will come home.”

  Dad jiggled Tipper up and down, looking uncertain. Crow crept silently into sight, and loitered at threshold of the kitchen. Dad’s expression softened, and he pulled out a chair at the table, inviting Crow to sit.

  Crow just stared, and didn’t move any further into the room.

  Dad smiled. “I think I need to change this baby’s bum,” he said.

  As Dad passed by, Crow shrank back against the door frame. Dad put a hand on his shoulder, and gently squeezed. “You take your time,” he whispered.

  As soon as Dad left, Crow crept to Mup’s side. He climbed up into the chair Dad had pulled out for him. “Your mam’s not coming back,” he said.

  “She will,” said Mup, her eyes on the back door.

  “She won’t. Once they’ve gone, they never come back.”

  She glanced a smile at him. “It doesn’t have to be like that,” she said. “You wait and see.”

  Mup took Crow’s hand, and when Dad came back, she and Crow were sitting side by side at the kitchen table, watching the unlocked door, and waiting for the storm to pass.

  The storm lasted all night, and then, in the morning, it just stopped.

  Mup didn’t notice at first. She was sitting at the kitchen table with Dad and Crow. They’d sat there all night long, listening to things thudding against the roof and walls; listening to the storm tear up the garden. Dad made tea, milky and warm and sweet like always. Mup cradled her cup and watched the door and allowed her drink to go cold. She was waiting for her mam. She was waiting for her to come hom
e. Her whole body felt tired, from the top of her head down to the tips of her toes – a big soft pillow with no bones. Her eyes burned from watching the door.

  Gradually the peacefulness of the kitchen sunk in, and Mup realized that Crow and Dad were talking. Their voices were so soft that she hadn’t noticed them until the noise of the storm had gone. Dad was explaining how aeroplanes worked. Crow was sipping his cold tea, his black eyes huge over the top of his mug. Mup didn’t think he was listening to what Dad was saying – not really – but he was taking in every detail of Dad’s face, scanning all the lines and contours and valleys as if getting ready to paint a picture of it, or make a map.

  Stiffly, Mup straightened and looked around. Tipper was asleep in the dog-bed, with Badger curled around him like an old teddy bear. Mup vaguely recalled Dad trying to get Tipper to go to bed sometime during the night. Tipper had insisted that the dog-bed was his bed. Eventually, Dad had given up and laid him down beside Badger.

  Mup was glad Dad had given up. Her little brother looked so peaceful.

  Outside, a bird began to sing. Its voice was silver and lovely over the hum of Dad’s voice. Mup looked to the window, and saw that the sun had risen. The sky was full of clear, early light. She got up and went to the back door, and opened it.

  The garden was a paradise of sparkles, every raindrop reflecting the sun. Everything was bright and wet and new, as if the storm had washed it clean. The trees at the end of the garden were a dark band of purple shadows. Mup strained her eyes, watching them, waiting.

  Behind her, Dad began quietly putting the cups into the sink. He put on the kettle.

  Crow went to crouch by the dog basket.

  “Little brother,” he said to Tipper. “Your father is making you a bottle.”

  Tipper said, “Hmm?”

  Badger sighed, and stretched and yawned.

  Mup went outside.