by Lari Don
Mr Crottel bowed his head to Beth. Beth nodded back to him. The gate swung open.
As Beth left the garden, Mr Crottel shouted at Molly: “See, child. That’s how to speak to a witch. With a bit of respect!”
Beth closed the gate, whispered to the hedge, then walked back to the bikes.
Molly rolled her fleece up with the stains on the inside. She glanced at the hedge, which was easing back into its previous shape.
She ran after Beth. “Did he let you go because you spoke to him politely? I was polite too, and he didn’t let me go.”
Beth picked up her bike and turned to look at Molly. A long considering look. Molly glanced down at her ripped jeans, her manky fleece, her scraped hands.
Beth shook her head. “You really don’t fit into our world, do you?” Then she sighed. “The witch let me go because I carry the power of the trees within me and he’s not strong enough to stand against me. I was always safe in his garden.”
“I didn’t realise that. I jumped out of your arms because I thought his dogs would hurt you.”
Beth climbed onto her bike. “Really? I thought you just panicked.”
“No, I was trying to…”
But Beth had ridden off.
Molly followed on her bike, trying to cycle like a girl going in a straight line, rather than a hare zigzagging all over the place.
Molly caught up with Beth at the clock tower, where the dryad took the road to the right.
“I didn’t panic, you know,” Molly gasped as she drew up close to Beth.
“You don’t have to explain. Hares get frightened, I know that.”
“But I’m not a hare. Even when I am a hare, I mean. I don’t think like a hare, I just look like one.”
“You move like a hare. And I felt you shiver in my arms.”
Molly didn’t want to think of herself as a shivering scared animal. “I didn’t panic. It was a plan to draw the dogs away from you. Really.”
Beth shrugged. “Whatever.” She put on another burst of speed as they headed out of town.
Now Molly could see the wood they were cycling towards. Not the dark green straight lines of a forestry plantation, but the more colourful and varied outlines of a patch of old-growth woodland.
Beth leapt off her bike and propped it against the first tree she came to. She walked into the wood, then stopped to place her hand flat on the bark of a tall silver birch.
Molly followed her in, took a deep breath and said, “Thanks, Beth. Thanks for opening the hedge and—”
“Shhhh,” said Beth, “don’t interrupt.”
Molly wondered if there was any point in talking to this girl at all. She watched as Beth laid her cheek against the tree like she was listening to it.
Molly was beginning to accept that magic existed. It was hard to deny when she regularly turned into a hare. But listening to trees? That seemed unlikely.
Though as she stood still, Molly could hear the tree too. Not words, but a gentle hiss and whisper in the air as the delicate leaves and supple twigs moved above in a tiny breeze. She glanced up and listened harder, wondering if there was meaning on the edge of the whisper.
“Come on, don’t just stand about gawking,” said Beth.
Molly looked down. Beth wasn’t leaning against the tree any more, she was standing with her arms folded, frowning. She whirled round and marched off, and Molly followed her past more birch trees, as well as bright rowans and tall pines, and a few trees that Molly thought might be sycamores, geans and beech trees.
There was grass and clover underfoot, but also fallen leaves, as autumn reached slowly into the woods. There were a few red berries among the yellow leaves and pine cones on the ground, and sturdy mushrooms pushing up through the leaf litter.
But Molly couldn’t stop to look, because Beth was striding ahead. Molly wondered whether she should follow or just wait with the bikes.
“What am I here for anyway?” she asked, her voice too loud in the soft rustling quiet of the wood. “Do you want me to take notes when we’re speaking to your family? Should I ask questions if I think of any?”
“No, just sit still and be quiet.”
“Maybe if you tell me about the curse before we get there, I’ll be able to help.”
“No human can help. It’s a human curse that’s killing this wood.” Beth took a few steps to her right and pointed to a large bare circle of earth, dotted with windblown leaves, but with no plants growing on it. “Look!”
“Look at what? There’s nothing there.”
“Absolutely. Nothing growing, nothing alive. Look at the trees around it.”
Molly looked up. The two pine trees nearest the bare earth had black scars on their trunks and were missing a few branches. It looked like both trees had been…
“Burnt. They’re burnt! Is someone setting fire to your trees?”
Beth nodded, her lips pale and her eyes wet. “Someone who died more than three hundred years ago.”
“A dying curse? Isn’t that the strongest kind?”
“The cruellest kind, because we can’t negotiate with the curse-caster and get it lifted.”
“That doesn’t always work even if they are alive,” said Molly. “Mr Crottel isn’t going to lift my curse.”
“You didn’t approach him right. You annoyed him even more.”
“If you’d had a better idea, you should have suggested it beforehand!”
“I got you out of there…”
“And I’ve already tried to say thank you.” Molly could feel herself losing patience with Beth, who seemed determined to take offence at everything Molly said or did. But she could also see how upset Beth was, standing beside the burnt trees, so she took a deep breath, and said, “Let’s forget about my curse for a minute and think about yours. Who’s burning your trees?”
“A witch. A human with nasty dark magic.”
“A dead witch?”
“Dead, but still causing trouble. Her name was Meg Widdershins. Her real name was probably Meg Smith or something, but she was known as Meg Widdershins. She took advantage of local families by making their cows run dry and giving their children coughs and sneezes so she could demand money to heal them with herbs. When the families realised she was tricking them, she was burnt in the town square.
“As she died, she cursed the families who’d accused her, and she also cursed the trees whose branches were burning her. She cast a curse so that every year, in the month of her death, a member of each family died and a tree in this wood burned. Over the generations, those families lost so many members they no longer exist, but the wood still loses one tree every year.”
Molly looked around. There must be thousands of trees in this wood. Surely losing one tree a year wasn’t too bad? Not like a person dying. But she didn’t say that out loud.
“Does someone sneak in and set fire to the tree? Couldn’t you just catch and stop whoever it is?”
“You don’t understand how it works. It’s a curse, it happens by magic. The tree just starts to burn, with no match or spark or lightning setting it off. No warning either. We never know which tree it will be, or which day in October.
“The tree flares up like a torch, burns to a pillar of ash, then collapses to the ground. The dryad who cares for that tree burns too.” Beth held out her arm, pulling up her black sleeve, and Molly saw a shiny jagged burn near her elbow.
“That was last year. The tree that stood here. A mature birch with a black base because her older silver had worn away. She’d been here so long that three of us had cared for her, but she still had many strong years in her. Then she burnt in one flash of heat and pain and terror. And I burnt too.
“And this,” she pulled down her top to show a red line on her shoulder, “this tree burnt nine years ago. She wasn’t an old tree, she was slim and flexible. She burnt when I was only a tiny child and left this scar. It’s my first real memory. Me screaming and my family running towards a screaming tree.
“We can’t s
ave the curse-hit tree once it starts to burn. The tree can be soaking wet, but that doesn’t stop the fire. It’s like the tree is burning from the inside. And when a birch burns, it feels like I’m burning from the inside too.” Beth looked up at the charred trees above her. “All we can do is save the nearby trees, and we don’t always manage that fast enough.”
She stood in the middle of the bare patch. “No tree will ever flourish here again. Small plants might struggle through. But we can never get a tree to grow where the curse has burnt.” Her voice shook as she said, “So, over time, the whole wood will burn and no trees will grow here at all.”
Molly wanted to hug Beth, to offer sympathy, but she suspected the dryad would shove her away. So she said, “You know lots about the curse already. Perhaps you could fill in the homework sheet yourself?”
“I know about the effects of the curse on me and the trees. I don’t know the whole history. Most of my family love old gossip, so we’ll work through Mrs Sharpe’s questions with them.” Beth strode off again.
Molly looked round more closely and saw that the random lines of healthy trees were interrupted by frequent gaps where nothing grew. Losing one tree every year was enough, over a long time, to destroy this wood. Beth’s wood was beautiful, but it was slowly dying.
Chapter 9
Deep in the wood, surrounded by a perfect circle of trees, Molly saw a big house.
A big wooden house.
“A wooden house?” Molly blurted out. “But…? How…? Why…? I thought…”
Beth let Molly make a spluttering fool of herself for a few seconds, then said calmly, “We don’t cut down trees, but when trees fall, we don’t leave them all to rot either. A tree can have a new life in the things we create with its wood. So of course we live in a wooden house.”
“And what do you do for… you know… cooking and lighting?”
“Ovens and lightbulbs, of course. This is the twenty-first century.” Beth grinned at Molly’s confusion. “But we light real fires sometimes too. I love woodsmoke and toasted cheese. But we only burn fallen wood, we don’t rip trees apart to steal living wood.”
Beth climbed the wooden steps to the varnished back door and pushed it open. “I’m home!”
A voice answered, “Has Aggie thrown you out? Were you rude about witches, or did you refuse to do your homework?” A round woman with cherry-red hair was laying cakes on cooling racks on the kitchen table, a little girl by her side. An old man was snoozing in a rocking chair.
“I’m here to do my homework, Jean.” Beth turned to Molly. “This is my Aunt Jean, my Uncle Pete, and my teeny tiny pesky little cousin Rosalind. This is my classmate Molly. Mrs Sharpe wants us all to ask questions about our curses. Molly, did you bring the questions?”
Molly said hello and washed her grotty hands at the kitchen sink, then pulled out her own question sheet, which had nothing written on it because Mr Crottel hadn’t given her any positive answers. “Didn’t you bring a worksheet?”
“I don’t like paper. It’s not a sustainable use of wood. I prefer writing on a tablet.”
Beth sat down and reached for the cakes on the nearest rack. Her Aunt Jean moved them to the other side of the table.
Molly sat down too. “Is that why you’re getting Innes to take all the notes?”
“That and the fact he’s trying to become the perfect pupil all of a sudden, in his desperation to be top of this class. If you write the answers while I ask the questions, I suppose that might be helpful.”
As Molly hunted for a pen in her pocket, she felt a tap on her leg and looked down.
The little girl, who had red cheeks and dark hair pulled up into two bouncy bunches, was offering her a cake. “I baked this cake all myself. It’s probably a horrid cake, because the one I ate was soggy in the middle and burnt on the outside. But I made it and it’s a present, so you have to say thank you. If it really is horrid, then you can give it back once you’ve said thank you, and I won’t be offended. Then I’ll feed it to the birds, because they’re not fussy. And next time you come I’ll bake you a better cake. I’ll bake it for longer in the middle so it’s properly crumby and I’ll bake it for less time on the outside so it isn’t burnt.”
The little girl handed Molly a plate with a sad saggy grey cake on it.
Molly smiled. “Thank you!” She nibbled the least burnt bit.
Rosalind stared at Molly. “It’s horrid, isn’t it?”
Molly nodded.
Rosalind giggled. “I knew it would be horrid! I’ll feed it to the birds under my rowan trees.” She took the plate and hopped out of the door.
Molly looked around the table. “Is Rosalind a dryad too? For rowan trees?”
Beth nodded. She’d managed to grab one of Jean’s perfect golden cakes, so her mouth was full.
“If she’s a dryad for rowans, why isn’t she called Rowan? It’s a real girl’s name and it sounds lovely.”
Beth swallowed. “Then we couldn’t tell the difference between her and all the other rowan dryads who’ve looked after this wood, or the rowan dryads working in other woods right now. It would be like naming a human child ‘Girl’ or ‘Boy’. Everyone needs their own name. I am Beth of the Birches. She is Rosalind of the Rowans.”
Molly nodded. “So, is your mum a silver birch dryad too?”
“We don’t have parents.” Beth sat up straighter and her voice grew sharper, with a mix of defensiveness and pride. “We don’t need them. Each of us is found in a tree, the day after the previous dryad of those trees dies. At the foot of a tree, or in the branches, or in a hollow trunk. It’s like a treasure hunt, searching for the new baby in the family.
“I found Rosalind, didn’t I?” She grinned at the little girl, who was skipping back in with an empty plate. “I found her wrapped in a bright red blanket under a rowan tree, gazing at the leaves above her, and I gave her a hug…” Beth gave Rosalind another hug, as the little girl stretched up for an unburnt cake. “We call ourselves cousins and aunts and uncles. The trees of our kind are our brothers and sisters. That’s why I won’t let any more of them burn.”
Jean pushed the rack of golden cakes towards Molly, who murmured thanks and took one. Then Jean said, “Shall I call the others to help with your questions, Beth?”
“No, you and Uncle Pete know more about this than anyone else in the house.”
Beth looked at Molly’s sheet. “The first question is: Who cast the curse?”
Uncle Pete opened his eyes, bright in his dark creased cheeks, and answered, “Meg Widdershins. You know that, Beth.”
Molly asked, “What was her real name?”
Beth frowned. “Shhh.”
“But you said it probably wasn’t her real name. I just wondered if anyone knows her real name.”
Uncle Pete answered, “It was Wilkie. Margaret Wilkie.”
Molly wrote down:
Meg Widdershins,
real name: Margaret Wilkie.
Then she asked, “Was that her married name or her, what do you call it, maiden name?”
Uncle Pete said, “I’ve no idea. But I know it was the name on the legal documents. ‘Margaret Wilkie, also known as Meg Widdershins’. Same initials, that’s why I remember it from when my uncles and aunts told me the story.”
Beth sighed. “Molly, if you insist on writing down two answers for every question, this is going to take ages…”
Aunt Jean said, “Your friend has the right idea, Beth. If you want to do your homework thoroughly, you should do more than you were asked to do.”
Beth snapped, “I didn’t say she was my friend, I said she was my classmate. Second question: When was the curse cast?”
Jean and Pete spoke in unison: “Dawn on seventeeth of October 1661.”
“What time is dawn?” asked Molly, her pen poised over the paper.
This time Jean sighed. “Don’t you know when the sun rises each day, child?”
Molly shook her head.
Beth said, “It’s j
ust before 8 a.m. in mid-October. But it doesn’t really matter, because the curse lasts all month, and the tree might burn any day, any time in October.”
“It does matter, Beth, because it’s another answer on the sheet. Remember, this is all about impressing Mrs Sharpe with teamwork and attitude and effort, and I didn’t get any answers from Mr Crottel, apart from a big fat smelly ‘NO’, so let’s gather lots of long answers here.”
Pete murmured, “Mr Crottel? He’s a nasty one. Never says thank you to any plant or tree. If he cursed you, he won’t lift it out of kindness or remorse. I hope our answers will help Aggie find another way. What’s the next question?”
“Why was the curse cast?” said Molly and Beth together.
“Because the local people, in their rush to burn Meg Widdershins as a witch, didn’t bother to find dry dead firewood,” explained Jean. “Or possibly they wanted the fire to burn slow and painful. So they chopped down trees from this wood, sliced logs and kindling from the fresh damp timber, and burnt Meg Widdershins with greenwood smoke and flames. It was a cruel thing to do, both to the woman and to the trees. But she didn’t notice the trees’ pain, she only felt her own. She cursed those who burnt her and the wood they used.
“It was a dying curse, conjured from agony and terror. I should feel sorry for her, but I’ve lost so many of my trees and my loved ones’ trees, that I can’t find any spare pity for her.”
Molly looked at the next question. “I think you’ve just answered this, but—”
Beth read out loud: “Was the curse justified and reasonable, or disproportionate?”
Aunt Jean and Uncle Pete looked at each other.
In the brief silence, Molly realised Rosalind was sitting under the table, murmuring a rhyme about berries and playing with Molly’s laces.
Then Uncle Pete said, “Meg Widdershins wasn’t in a situation where reason was easy for her to grasp. She was dying, so it probably seemed entirely justified, reasonable and proportionate to her. But she’s killed hundreds of people, weakening a dozen local families so effectively that now no humans die by her curse, because none of the original accusers’ descendants are left. And she’s still destroying trees and causing grief and pain to dryads who never hurt her at all. So, no, it was not justified, reasonable or proportionate.”