“What do you know of my mother?” snarled Bill, finally snapping under the emotional and physical fatigue. He rushed at Vokes, avoiding Brianna’s desperate attempt to grab him, and pinned the old man to his chair by the neck.
“What do you know of my mother?”
There was a tear in Vokes’ eye as he croaked, “She is my daughter.”
At this, Bill pulled back and fell into the other chair, his face white.
“Hold on a minute,” Brianna said, standing between the two of them but pointing at Vokes, “that would make you Bill’s grandfather.”
Nomenclature Vokes, sighed, tears streaming down his cheek and said simply. “Yes.”
“I need some air,” Bill said, raising himself unsteadily and heading for the door.
Bill sat in the kitchen garden at Hemlock’s Farm. Despite the bright sunshine on this chilly day, he felt as though he’d been engulfed in a black wave. He was mortally afraid for his father’s safety. Like as not he had been found already, and Bill could only see one outcome from the encounter. All his short life, Bill had regarded his father as the solid, dependable, foundation he could always rely on. But Blackjack stood little chance against an agent who could strike fear into someone with the power of Vokes. If Bill were there, on the other hand, he’d be able to protect his father. And wasn’t it time he repaid the favour? Blackjack’s parenting style was, now Bill came to think about it, an odd balance between wanting his son to stand on his own two feet and an uncharacteristic paranoia. Had he known all along that, one day, someone would come looking for him?
So, he wasn’t grieving for his father, it was too early for that although he’d been overwhelmed with a feeling of dread when he’d heard Vokes’ story. His mind simply couldn’t cope, and so it had shut down his feelings entirely, leaving him numb. Every movement felt as though he was wading through a deep river, each step taking him further out. Right now, all he wanted was to sit here, as still and inhuman as the statue of the goddess Voluminous that was, even now, staring at him. His heart told him to go home and find his father. At least, most of it did. There was something else there too, a new flavour.
“Are you okay?” Brianna asked. He hadn’t noticed her join him in the garden, hadn’t even realised she’d sat down next to him. “Bill?”
He didn’t look at her. “I just want to be on my own.”
There was a sigh from next to him. “Alright. I’ll leave you for a bit.”
And he felt the breeze as she got up and walked slowly away. He wished she hadn’t gone.
He sat, perfectly still, for a time before his mind, realising, perhaps, that it was floundering in emotional quicksand, began to move again, sluggishly. He looked around him at a garden that, despite the season, he knew to be full of colours he couldn't see.
Some time later, however, he did notice when Brianna came into the garden and sat down beside him.
“Sorry,” he said, “I should have asked you to stay.”
“It’s alright, you’ve had a shock.” Her voice was soft and full of concern.
“I need to go home, to find dad. He needs to be warned and protected. That’s if he hasn’t already…”
She smiled sadly. “I know you do. But you can’t go just yet, you’re needed here, and you couldn’t possibly return to Upton Moredit and be back here before the manure hits the spokes.”
“I don’t see how I can be of any use here,” Bill said, absentmindedly picking the flowers off a lavender stem. “I’ve lost my powers. I’m just an ordinary boy with nothing to give, nothing to live for.”
“Then live for me, at least for now,” Brianna said. “I can’t sit here and wait for the end, I’ve got to do something, and we’re partners, aren’t we?”
Bill looked into her hazel eyes and something changed in his heart, something he would later identify as hope. For now, it simply felt like purpose. “I suppose we are, although you’re the one with the ninja skills, I’m just the nerd who follows at your tail.”
Brianna leant forward and kissed him on the forehead. “But you’re my nerd and, right now, we need to find out all we can about this Vokes person, he knows the Faerie King better than anyone. So, come on.”
She held out her hand and, after a moment’s hesitation, he took it.
Chapter 24
“This ain’t the right way to my ‘ouse. You need to go right ‘ere, not left,” Gramma said, poking her head up from behind the seat rail.
There was a pause as the cogs behind Gramma’s forehead turned slowly.
“You need to go left ‘ere, not right.”
Jessie Hemlock who was, naturally, in the driver’s seat, called over her shoulder. “We ‘ain’t goin’ to your place, change of plan.”
“Charming,” Velicity said from her position sitting on the back of the cart with her legs dangling over the tailgate. “Don’t bother consulting us, will you? So, where are we going?”
“I didn’t want to discuss it out loud till we was a good distance from the town,” Jessie said, “but I had a quiet word with Stinky Willy while he was lyin’ in that ditch where we left ‘im. Seems to me, that pale monster Odius needs sortin’ out. So, I asked nicely where 'e could be found. Then I asked not-so-nicely.”
“‘old your ‘orses,” said Gramma. “I ain’t in no ‘urry to see ‘im again, and that’s a fact!”
“Neither am I,” piped up Velicity from the back. “He humiliated us, and that was when we had power, now we’re just three women.”
Jessie Hemlock sighed.
“I ain’t suggestin’ we roll in there and challenge him to a duel, but he stole somethin’ from each of us, and I intend to make him pay. And, as for powers,” she continued, “though we may just be women, us three broke out of the most secure gaol in these parts and got out of the town without bein’ caught. We’ve got more about us than just magic, though it’s taken me long enough to realise that meself.”
“Yeah,” Gramma said, turning her opinion on a sixpence. “Our Jessie’s got the fagglin’, I’ve got the leatherin’ and our Velicity’s got the distractin’.”
“Wonderful,” said Velicity. “So, how are you ‘faggling’ to make General Odius pay?”
Jessie brought the donkey to a halt and turned to face the other two. “We can’t defeat him without our magic.”
“I thought you just said…” Velicity began before Jessie Hemlock put a hand up to silence her.
“I said we shouldn’t underestimate ourselves. But three ordinary women ain’t got much of a chance against ‘im and ‘is army of rogues,” she said. “No, we need our magic back, and I’d bet Gramma’s teeth he’s got the treasures with ‘im, they’re too important to trust to anyone else. We’ll use our brains, brawn and feminine wiles to find the vessels and then, my friends…”
“‘e’ll get a leatherin’, oh the leatherin’ ‘e will get,” finished Gramma.
Some time later, the three women crouched in the shelter of a stand of trees overlooking the camp of General Odius. Stinky Willy had told them that Odius had ordered his army of vagrants to gather in a place called Ashanger and the ex-witches had followed the trail of detritus through the hamlet to a dell known locally as Nora’s Nook.10 They’d skirted the hills surrounding the dell and approached through the ash copse to look down on them.
In the middle of the bowl was a derelict farmhouse, the flicker of firelight playing through the holes in the walls where windows had once been. The bright sunshine of earlier had given way to a gloomy late afternoon, and it was hard to make out any detail from a couple of hundred yards away.
“Looks like there’s a fair few of ‘em,” Jessie Hemlock said. “I reckon he’s emptied every drainage ditch and hedge in the county, though what he plans to do with ‘em now, I don’t know.”
“You can be sure it involves the Faerie King, but I can’t begin to think what he’d want with an army of tramps,” said Velicity.
Jessie made herself more comfortable by leaning against a tree. “Ma
ybe his master don’t know about the vagrants, maybe they’re just to protect Odius, and the vessels, till he gets them to ‘im.”
“But the Faerie King’s still trapped, isn’t he?” Velicity asked.
Jessie nodded. “And so Odius waits here, till he gets a signal.”
“Hold on a minute, what’s that?” said Velicity, pointing to a small mound near the ruined dwelling.
“I don’t know,” Jessie said, squinting. “but I recognise that.”
Velicity followed her arm to where she saw a small, dark shape, scrambling furtively towards the building. It was approaching something of the right size and form to be a guard and Velicity flung her hand over her mouth reflexively as she realised who it was.
“Gramma!” she hissed.
“Silly old bugger,” Jessie said. “if she gets caught, we’ll ‘ave the whole lot of ‘em shamblin’ up here after us.”
The small shape approached the larger one which appeared to be looking in the opposite direction. A long object that Velicity imagined to be a large stick was raised and brought down rapidly, with a crack that was audible even from where they sat. The large shape fell instantly, and Gramma could be seen ferreting around on the ground nearby. Within moments, several other shapes hurried out of the ruined building, but Gramma had darted to the mound Velicity had spotted earlier and had, it seemed, merged with it.
The two women sat, holding their breath. A shape went over to the felled man and gave him a kick before concluding, it seemed, that he was simply drunk on duty, and the noise they’d heard was him connecting with the ground. Peace was restored, and they filed back into the building.
A matter of minutes later, Gramma had left the shelter of the pile and scampered like a rheumatic badger from tree to tree, shadow to shadow, up the slope to where they waited.
“What the hell were you up to?” barked Jessie Hemlock as Gramma flung herself onto the ground, panting.
It took several minutes before the old girl could respond.
“I were…” she said, hoarsely, “...bloody famished. I ‘aven’t ‘ad a jam sarnie for weeks.”
Gramma let her apron open fully, and a loaf of bread, a bottle of something liquid and three apples fell onto the ground.
“Thank you, Gramma,” Velicity said, suddenly becoming aware of just how hungry she was, “but that was risky, they could have spotted you.”
Gramma’s breath eased up, and she finally felt capable of speaking.
“No, it were no risk really, I ‘ad my Disability Cloak on.”
“You mean you had an Invisibility Cloak?”
“No, I mean what I said,” Gramma insisted. “When I’ve got me Disability Cloak on, people think I’m just a poor old crippled woman, and they look right through me. Same effect, I’ll grant you, but I ain’t actually invisible, it’s just no-one bothers to notice me.”
Jessie Hemlock chuckled. “But it’s just your normal cloak, isn’t it? The one you’ve been wearin’ since you arrived at my house?”
Gramma smiled.
“It is, and a bloody good disguise it is, too!” she sat back and began breaking the loaf into three, somewhat equal, pieces. “Oh, and by the way, that pile I was ‘iding in, it’s for a burnin’. Some poor bugger’s for it, I ‘spect they’re in that old cottage now. There were a lot of laughin’, and I thought I ‘eard a girl's voice.”
“Well, there’s not a lot we can do, we’ve got to stick to our aims otherwise a lot more than one person’s going to die. That Faerie King has a plan to get out and the General down there is just waitin’ to deliver the vessels, and our power, to him. If he does that, we’re all goners,” Jessie said. “For now, we watch and wait, he’s going nowhere.”
Chortley’s feet ached, and he was lost. The crazy horse had thrown him and run off within twenty minutes of leaving the burning cottage. Since then, Chortley had headed, on foot, towards the downs on which stood the stone circle. He cursed himself that he hadn’t had the sense when he left the circle last time to make a map or, at least, commit the landscape to memory. Last time he’d been here, he’d spent hours meandering over the hills and into the dingles, and that had been on horseback. He was now walking along a track that seemed somewhat familiar - muddy white chalk showing beneath a layer of rotting leaves - and he could now see the downs marching across the horizon in front of him.
He wasn’t going to make it to the circle tonight. He didn’t fancy stumbling around the downs in the dark, getting hopelessly lost. To make matters worse, his mind was all over the place, oscillating between rage and paranoia, razor sharp coherence and gibbering wreck, it was exhausting.
There was also the heat he felt welling up in his arms from time to time and the bitter taste of acrid smoke on his tongue. He was certain it shouldn’t be too hard to control if that idiot brother of his managed it, but he felt as though he were at its mercy, not the other way around. It certainly became more marked when he got agitated, so Chortley had tried to adopt a more relaxed disposition, but that unfamiliar state had proven impossible to achieve and had led, paradoxically, to him feeling even more wound up than before.
For now, he simply trudged along, trying not to think too far ahead. There would be a time when he could be as agitated as he liked, soon enough.
He decided it would be better to find shelter and hunker down until dawn, and then hope he’d recognise the way once he’d set off. It was frustrating, but Chortley had no doubt he’d find the stone circle eventually, it was inconceivable that all this effort and fuss would end with him forever wandering aimlessly across the grass. If push came to shove, he’d ask one of the peasants, but he didn’t want anyone poking their pock-marked nose into his business, so that would be a last resort.
It was just as the well-tended fields to either side of the road began to give way to sheep pasture that he spotted the rickety barn, probably a shepherd’s hut. That would do.
When Bill returned, reluctantly, to the little parlour of the Hemlocks’ farmhouse, he found Vokes sitting on his own in front of the dying fire, dozing. The sound of the door opening and the two of them sitting down was enough to rouse him, and he sat, rubbing his eyes, with a sad smile on his face.
“I’m glad you’ve come back,” he said.
“Tell me what I need to know,” Bill responded.
Vokes sat up straight and wiped his eyes of sleep and tears.
“Well, where to begin, I wonder? The trouble is, we don’t have time for the whole story, so you’ll have to make do with the shortened form, for now.”
“Good,” said Bill.
Over the years, he’d grown used to the circuitous way Vokes explained things, and he simply didn’t have the patience or the mental reserves to cope with that style today.
Vokes seemed a little discomfited by Bill’s shortness. He cleared his throat and fidgeted.
“Let’s begin with your mother,” he said, finally. “I was a participant in the last Faerie War, I played quite a prominent part, don’t you know.”
“No, I didn’t,” responded Bill, without thinking.
“Oh, well you probably don’t know much about the Faerie Wars at all, perhaps I should have instructed you but, to be honest, I wanted to forget them. Anyway, during the war, a portal that had been shut for centuries was opened between our world and theirs.”
Brianna piped up. “The doughnut stone in the Cartwheel.”
Vokes looked surprised.
“Yes, yes indeed. Well, during that war I met and fell in love with a fairie woman. I know, I know,” he said, seeing their astonishment, “a foolish thing to do, it never works out. And so it didn’t, she grew bored of me. But not before producing a daughter who was born in Faerie. She returned to their land when the portal was shut but, the remarkable thing was, this child was able to move willingly between worlds as, with some assistance, was I. It was something to do with the magic that sealed the portal, I think, and I only found out because I spent rather a long time in that stone circle after my l
over was sent back to Faerie. I was there the night she pushed your mother through the hole, and when another pair of hands grabbed her back. I ran at the portal without thinking, and I passed through.”
“How is that possible if the portal was shut?” asked Brianna.
Vokes shrugged. “Actually, for my daughter, the answer is simple - she has the blood of both worlds and can, therefore, move between them. As for myself, it was the staff - it acts as a kind of key that meant I could travel from our world to the other. The portal is a one-way door, you see, admitting inhabitants only to the world of their blood. I could leave the Darkworld, but not enter it without the staff. The king, on the other hand, cannot enter our world because of his Faerie blood - not without help.”
The old man paused for a moment. Bill recognised the signs as Vokes tried to re-tread the squirrel-like paths of this thoughts. After a few seconds, his face lit up as he found the mental acorn. Nuts indeed.
“Ah yes, I remember. I arrived on the other side of the portal to find my lover and the Faerie King locked in battle over my daughter. I sought to intervene, but my magic doesn’t work on that side, and I was overpowered by the king’s guard and thrown back into this world. The staff was taken from me as I passed through and I didn’t see it, or my daughter, for many years.”
The old wizard was silent for a while, his mind wandering again. “No, the next time I saw her, she’d grown into a beautiful woman. She found me, you see, and needed shelter. She’d been sent into our world by the Faerie King to give birth to another who could bring him into our world, someone who could wield the staff they’d kept from me but Astria, your mother, was repulsed by what she’d done, and had only done it because the King had persuaded her that he would kill me if she didn’t. Of course, he couldn’t, not without the portal being opened, or an agent on this side. She wasn’t to know, though.”
Myths and Magic Page 17