by Katie M John
“What’s going on? Is it Martha?” she asked, peering over the top of Swan’s shoulder, who had purposely turned herself into a human barricade.
Swan nodded and took hold of Bunny’s elbow with the intention of steering her back to the house.
“Come home with us,” she commanded.
“No way,” she said, shaking her arm free from Swan’s grip, “I want to go and see what’s happening.”
“Trust us, you really don’t.”
Bunny put her hand on her hip and pouted. “You’ve seen!”
Fox snapped, “Yeah, well I wish I hadn’t.”
“It’s not fair,” Bunny whined.
“You are right, Bunny, it’s not fair. None of it. I should think that is exactly what Mrs. Paisley will be thinking when the police explain that her beautiful daughter has been murdered and then put out on show for the world to see the horror she endured.”
Bunny’s hard lips softened with the realisation of her behaviour. Her voice dropped, “Is it truly horrible?”
Swan’s voice response came out cracked, “Yes.”
“What did he do to her?”
“Come on, I’ll tell you the gory details back at home. I’m sure mum will want to know.”
Wren was standing on the doorstep, waiting for them to come home. She looked gripped by a shared sorrow, and Fox knew her mother was thinking how lucky she was to have her own three daughters alive and walking towards her. She smiled weakly at them and held out her arms, waiting to sweep them up in her arms.
“Come on in. We’ll have tea and talk about it.”
Fox leaned in to Swan and whispered, “Should we tell her about the scrying – how it’s our fault Martha’s dead?”
Swan shook her head, “It will raise too many questions about the Ravenhearts. We need to be careful.”
There wasn’t time to come up with a specific plan, but Fox guessed their meeting with Violet would still go ahead – not that there was much point to it now the Ravenhearts had already killed Martha. Goodness only knows what the results of their perverted ritual had brought about. Fox had underestimated the Ravenhearts; everybody had. They’d been cunning, Fox gave them that. Signing off their work so blatantly was perfect for throwing everybody off the scent and sending the police down the wrong track of chasing down a “Satanic” cult that didn’t exist. For all the village suspicions, there was no way anybody would believe three such young, beautiful, and accomplished women such as the Ravenhearts would ever be capable of the horrific torture of Martha Paisley.
Fox fleetingly wondered if Thalia would have the nerve to attend college. She almost laughed aloud at the thought of Thalia raising The Ancient Ones during the evening and heading off to do her Music and Drama A-level the next morning as if nothing had happened. It wasn’t that she found it funny, but that the whole situation was so absurd she could hardly get her head around it.
Wren poured them all tea and placed a plate of buttered toast in the middle of the table, not that any of them felt much like eating. Swan gave their mum a quick and factual description of what they had seen, leaving out none of the details. It was better to tell her now about the witchcraft related details rather than her find out later and wonder why her daughter had felt it necessary to omit them. Wren sat sipping her tea, listening carefully.
“So Martha was murdered as part of a ritual?” she said when Swan had finished.
“It looks that way.”
“A black magic ritual?” Bunny asked, drinking in every aspect of the account.
Fox nodded. “Well, someone trying to make it look like the result of a black magic ritual.”
Wren looked sideways at Fox, her mouth twisted in question. “What do you mean? You don’t think it’s… authentic?”
Fox shrugged. “I don’t know. It all looked a little… dramatic; the white dress, the headdress, the bandaging, the sign around the neck. It was all too flamboyant. And why, if they murdered Martha as part of a black magic ritual, would they want to make such a public display of what they were up to?”
“They?”
The internal cursed at Fox’s slip and she quickly garbled out, “Well it’s most likely them if it’s a cult or something…”
Wren nodded, satisfied with Fox’s reasoning.
“It’s a terrible shame. She seemed such a sweet girl.” Wren stopped to pour out another cup of tea. “And, Jack, her boyfriend… do you think it’s possible he might be involved with some kind of cult?”
“Well he’s always been heavily involved in St. Ursula’s!” Bunny quipped.
Wren threw her a warning glance and Bunny picked up a slice of toast in order to deflect.
Fox’s chair made a horrible noise as it scraped across the flagstone floor. Swan looked at her, surprised she should have anywhere else to be going.
“Surely you’re not going into college? Not after what you’ve seen this morning. Not with your back all stitched up. You should take some time to …” she shrugged, not really sure what advice she should be offering.
“Why not?” Bunny offered. “It’s not like Martha and Fox were really good friends; she barely knew her.” Bunny smiled sweetly. “And I’m sure the healing effect of Will Harrington’s warm hands will be much better for Fox than lounging around in bed all day.”
Swan turned to look at her sister with her mouth ajar. “Bunny…!” she shook her head. “Words fail me; I can’t believe what a total…”
“She’s right,” Wren offered, to the surprise of both Fox and Swan. “It’s not our grief to steal. It’s terribly sad, but Martha wasn’t ours. You should all go to college as normal. We will light candles for her tonight.”
Bunny grabbed another slice of toast as she stood and headed off towards the stairs, whilst Swan sat stubbornly at the table.
“It doesn’t feel right, to be going off and living our lives, when Martha is out there like that!”
“What would you do?” Wren asked, stroking Swan’s arm. “Your tears will not bring her back and the further we remove ourselves from this whole business, the better.”
The Meadowsweets were not used to their mother being quite so pragmatic or cold-hearted. She had raised them to feel the pain and sorrow of other people, to be sympathetic and open-hearted. Her response to Martha’s death seemed the exact opposite. Her sweet, innocent daughters had no idea how the community spotlight would soon come shining down on them, how every tiny suspicion and ill feeling going back generations, would rear its ugly head. When the villagers came with their pitchforks and burning torches, they were never much in the mood for a discussion on the difference between white and black witchcraft. A Witch was a Witch and when one of the villager’s own had fallen at the hands of one, then any Witch hanging from the gallows was seen as a victory against Satan. Hard times were coming and Wren feared the death of Martha Paisley was just the beginning.
When all of her daughters had left, she poured the last of the tea into the saucer, leaving just the leaves. She swirled them, letting them settle and read their message.
“Just as I feared,” she muttered to herself.
Wren walked over to the sink, flushed out the tea leaves with water and headed towards The Sanctuary. Here, she took a large leather-bound tome from the shelf and dusted the cover with her sleeve. It was too heavy to open in her arms and she dropped the book on to the oak table with a thud heavy enough to cause the collection of glass bottles to rattle. The title read The Occult Histories of Heargton. It had been a long time since the book had been opened and some of the pages were worryingly brittle under her fingers. The covens of Heargton had been settled for at least two generations and even the once powerful Ravenheart family had withered into a genteel existence… until now. Wren had concealed her suspicions from her daughters, but she was in no doubt Martha Paisley had not been murdered by pseudo Satanists; this had the markings of old magic – and there were few older covens than that of the Ravenhearts.
Wren flicked through the pages, sca
nning the various coven signals until she came across the image of a black raven with a heart held in its talons. A long, sprawling, family tree occupied the first couple of pages before the lengthy written history. It was a proud, violent, and murderous history, with connections to royalty and other high-born aristocrats woven throughout. Ravenheart Hall had suffered two devastating fires during its time, each the result of vengeful villagers in response to dastardly deeds committed by members of the Ravenheart family, who unusually for Witch lineage was littered with both male and female Witches. One village razing had occurred after the bodies of several maids were discovered butchered like animal carcasses in the ice house, and the other when several young children had gone missing from the village over the course of one long, hot summer; although there had been no evidence to prove the Ravenhearts had been responsible, the discovery of a black ritual room by one loose-tongued servant had been enough to cause a village riot and a ritual burning of both the house and the ‘warlock’, Lord Horatio Ravenheart.
Wren’s fingers traced down the page until she hit upon the passage she had been looking for. It concerned the discovery of five female bodies hanging in Ravenheart Woods in late winter of the year 1799. Each girl had been discovered dressed in a white robe with a strip of white cloth covering the wounds where her eyes had once been. They had all worn ivy circlets in their hair.
The eldest son of the Ravenheart family, Gaston Ravenheart, (reputed to be a weird and violent man) had been arrested and tried for murder, although many of the villagers believed it was his eldest daughter, Felicia, who had murdered the girls; she had a reputation for sharing her father’s violent temper after one of her maids had been beaten so badly with a horsewhip that her flesh had been cut down to her spine. The maid lived but she never walked again. The murdered girls became known in local folklore as the Angels of the Woods and it was generally believed they had been killed as part of a satanic ritual.
Time had caused the legend to fade and now, the only legacy of their tale were five tall stone columns, which had been placed in the forest as a memorial; but even these had weathered until the inscriptions had disappeared and now there was a general assumption by the villagers that the memorial stones were ancient standing stones connected to the iron age burial ground, which lay on the far west of the village.
The Ravenheart history was cut short at 1890, the year the book had been published. Since then, apart from the occasional rumour of violence, a couple of unfortunate suicides, and some rather convenient accidents, the Ravenhearts of Ravenheart Hall had been quietly biding their time.
Of course, all of this was an outsider’s interpretation of the Ravenheart family history. Horrid as it was, Wren carried the true tales, which had been passed down through the generations – and they were far darker than even the superstitious imaginations of the village gossips. There were many crimes that had gone unrecorded in The Occult Histories of Heargton. Most notable was the Ravenheart’s continual attempt to call up The Ancient Ones; a desire that ran like a plague through the Ravenheart bloodline. Each time they had tried, it had been up to The Guardians to stop them from achieving their dastardly goal. The services of the Guardians had not been required for over a hundred years, but now, Wren thought with a feeling of nausea, she would have to sit her daughters down and tell them it was time to fulfill their role.
*
“What a total waste of time!” Nigella snapped. “I can’t believe you could get something so simple so wrong. Are you a complete idiot?”
Thalia backed up against the wall under the strength of her sister’s anger. She stuttered, “H…how was I to know?” Thalia asked. “I mean she always acted so… pure and…”
Nigella grabbed hold of Thalia’s arm and twisted it hard. “Well, clearly she wasn’t! Clearly, she was a little more Jezebel and a little less the Virgin Mary!”
“I’m… I’m sorry,” Thalia pleaded, cowering with the expectation of her sister’s hot hand striking hard against her cheek.
“Back off,” Lilith commanded. “There was no way she could have known. That little Martha-whore was even wearing a chastity ring, pious as you like. Hell, I can’t stand hypocrites! She deserved exactly what she got.”
Lilith swept past them with a swish of her black silks. She was preparing to meet with one of the high priestesses of a coven from the North and had decided to go full-on with the Ravenheart look. Her neck, from nape to chin, was covered in row after row of dripping rubies and her hair was pinned up so that tendrils fell like coiling snakes. She looked nothing short of an Empress. Thalia, still under the grip of her sister, Nigella, hoped the priestess who was visiting didn’t make the same fashion faux-pas as the last one, who had turned up in a rather unfortunate sackcloth robe affair. For some reason, it had angered Lilith for weeks as she lamented the slipping of standards.
“It’s really very simple,” Lilith said as she rummaged through the drawer looking for her athame. “We need to make another sacrifice. A younger, purer offering. Damn it, where did I put it?”
“What have you lost?” Nigella asked.
“My blade. I was sure … Ah, here it is.” Lilith recovered the soft leather sheath from the drawer and withdrew the glinting knife. She looked at it lovingly before slipping it back in its cover.
“Why are you meeting with her?”
“Because she requested an audience.”
“Don’t you think your time would be more wisely spent, given the circumstances?” Nigella asked.
Lilith headed towards the door and raised her hand before letting it fall dismissively. “Our subjects remain loyal. They, unlike my sisters, still have faith in my powers!”
Nigella sighed and pulled away from Thalia, giving her a nudge as she did so that she cracked her elbow painfully against the wainscoting.
“What does she mean, a younger sacrifice?” Thalia asked.
Nigella rolled her eyes. “You really are very dumb, aren’t you!”
Thalia blushed, rubbing her elbow with her hand. “Do you always have to be so… mean?”
“Really,” Nigella smiled, “you ask a Ravenheart that question? Sometimes, I genuinely wonder whether we share the same blood.”
Thalia chose to ignore the bait and responded, “I get the whole ‘younger’ thing, obviously. I was just wondering how young she meant?”
Nigella headed over to the mantle piece and clicked her fingers at the hearth. Immediately, a roaring, green flamed fire erupted.
“I guess she means a child, one who we can be sure is pure as the winter snows, one whose blood is filled with life energy.”
“From the village?” Thalia asked, knowing there were only a handful of younger children who lived in the village. (Strange, now she thought on it. With a population of six hundred people, there really should be more young children.)
“Of course! The village still owes its debt. It’s long overdue.”
“And Fox Meadowsweet?”
Nigella turned to look at the flames. “Leave her to me. She won’t be playing her little games for much longer.”
10
Fox beckoned Will across the sixth-form common room. He had obviously not heard about the fate of Martha Paisley as he came bounding across the room with his usual goofy grin. Fox used the time it took him to navigate his way across the busy common room to try and work out exactly how she was going to break the news to him. By the time he reached her, she still hadn’t quite come to a conclusion.
“Hey,” she said.
“Howdy! Are you up for …” he stopped and gave her a second glance, registering something wasn’t right, “Are you okay?”
“No, not really.”
“Oh. Want to talk about it?”
Fox looked around the busy room and nodded. “Yes, but not here. Can we go somewhere else – somewhere quiet?”
“Sure,” he replied, reaching out to touch her on the arm in a strangely familiar way. Fox recoiled from his touch and Will flushed with embarrassment. �
�How about we head over to the library?”
“Okay,” Fox said, heading off in its direction.
They didn’t speak on the way. Fox found herself battling a swell of grief she had not expected to feel over the girl; after all, she had barely known her. Nevertheless, Martha had been part of the backdrop to her personal history right from when they’d been toddlers at playgroup, and now Fox was facing a lifetime of possibility in front of her whilst Martha… her thoughts trailed off, too sad to carry on.
Will held the library door open for her and she dipped her head under his arm. She noted how the two of them increasingly moved around each other in some weird form of synchronicity; they’d even started finishing each other’s sentences. These things confused her; she didn’t know what it meant. She was quite sure she didn’t have feelings for Will other than friendship, but why did she even seek that from him? They were hardly the most obviously compatible friends.
When she was sure they were alone, she dipped her voice and told him of the morning’s events. He stared wide-eyed at her as she explained how Martha’s body had been propped up in the well, a bandage around her wounded eyes, dressed in white with a pentagram hanging around her neck.
“I was too late, Will. It’s my fault she’s dead.”
He shook his head, “No, Foxy, you’re not the one who did that to her.”
“But I saw it before it happened; I could have stopped it.”
“How exactly?”
It was a simple question but it was one she hadn’t asked herself. The moment she’d seen Martha that morning she had decided to carry the guilt for her death but now, in that one simple question, Will had made her understand there was little she could have done. She couldn’t be held accountable for the evil of another. Yet, even though she had been given this lifeline, she couldn’t help but feel like she’d failed.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just think things could have been different.”
“Well, you’ll never know, so you can’t torture yourself over it. All I know is, bad things happen to good people and sometimes good doesn’t triumph over evil. You can’t take this all on yourself and if you continue to believe somehow you are responsible, then that means you must think I am, too, because you confided in me. You told me as much as you knew.”