The Wonkiest Witch

by Jeannie Wycherley

  “If somebody complained you mean?” The second voice demanded.

  “Well, yes …”

  “But we might be able to apply for retroactive planning?”

  “That’s a possibility. I wouldn’t stake my life on it.”

  “You don’t have to stake your life, Pimm. Surely the council will be more than pleased to see Whittle Inn bulldozed.”

  My mouth fell open in shock and I looked across at Jed, wide-eyed and furious.

  Charles Pimm. My surveyor.

  “You could be right, Gladstone. It’s been an eyesore for years.”

  Gladstone Talbot-Lloyd. I might have known. I had the urge to jump out of my hiding place and shout them down, intent on giving them a piece of my mind, but Jed leaned across to place a placating hand on my thigh. He shook his head slowly and mouthed the word, ‘no.’

  “I think we should go ahead. It has to be worth the risk. She’s one woman, alone, and a stranger in town. We can act fast and make sure we have no complaints from anyone locally. None that anyone will listen to anyway. We can neutralise them if we have to. Let’s loosen the purse strings.”

  “I’ll need more capital,” Pimm replied silkily.

  “You’ll get it. Talk to our contact,” Talbot-Lloyd growled.

  “And the complainants in the village? I’m not sure how we can keep them all quiet. Many of them will object to a larger housing estate being built on this land.”

  “Nimbys. They want more housing but don’t want to sacrifice a field to build it on. Ignore them. Everyone else does.”

  “But what about Whittle Inn and the Daemonne woman?”

  “Don’t worry. I have a team working on it.”

  Stealthily, we followed the pair as they made their way back to their vehicles. Neither of them drove a sleek black car, like the one I’d seen leaving the field, the day of the fire. Talbot-Lloyd owned a mud-spattered and fly encrusted navy Range Rover, while Pimm was driving a shiny silvery gold BMW. I watched them disappear down the road, a bitter taste coating the back of my throat.

  Jed caught my hand, sensing my distress, and pulled me back towards the inn. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll make some tea and we can think about what to do next.”

  We perched opposite each other, at the bar, nursing our mugs. I felt cold inside and out, but oddly calm. What’s that old adage? Know thine enemy? Well now I did.

  Except thinking about it, I didn’t really, did I?

  I stared into space, trying to weigh up what I knew. Yes, either of those men might have been responsible for the fire, but given that neither of them were of the craft, they couldn’t have used the Curse of Madb on the body I’d found outside.

  “What are you thinking?” Jed asked gently and I brought my focus back to him.

  “I’m so confused.”

  “You ought to speak to Gilchrist. Tell him what you overheard.”

  “Do you think he’ll believe us?” I asked. “What evidence do we have? Surely it’s all hearsay.”

  Jed shrugged.

  I placed my mug on the bar, and drew a large square in my notebook. “It’s almost like we have two separate problems.” I sketched in the inn, and then drew the boundary to the right hand side. “On the one hand we have a property developer building here,” I indicated the field next to us, “who wants to get his filthy paws on the inn and the land, so that he can develop here …” I shaded my land, “And on the other, there is some dark magic afoot. But I can’t see how the two are linked. Talbot Lloyd and Pimm, as wicked and evil as the pair of them are, are in no way, shape or form, part of my kind.”

  “You’d know for sure?” Jed asked.

  “I’m certain I would.”

  I would, wouldn’t I?

  “So what’s the connection?” Jed asked, watching me carefully.

  “Maybe there isn’t one? Maybe I’m just unlucky enough to have enemies at every turn.” I sighed. “But I can’t rule anything out. If we only knew the identity of the man who was killed out the back here, then that might help me discover who killed him.”

  “Perhaps you’re wrong and it wasn’t a curse? Perhaps he did fall.”

  “While scaling the outside wall? There had been no break-in, remember,” I reminded Jed. “The inn was secure.” I turned my thoughts back to the discovery of the body and the distinctive ruby ring.

  Jed stared at my diagram. “I could go to the planning office at the local council offices, and examine planning applications for the housing development next door. See how far it stretches, and ask about grounds to appeal, if you like?”

  “That would be helpful.” I jumped from my stool.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to London. There’s some people I need to reacquaint myself with.”

  Luca Shadowmender resided in a small house on a modern housing estate in Surbiton. From outside you would never have known that he was one of the most powerful, renowned and experienced wizards in Europe. Originating from Poland, he had crossed the channel as a boy with his parents. Now in his late seventies or early eighties, there was little about magick he didn’t know or couldn’t find out for you. Respected worldwide for his wisdom, his compassion and his great learning, he had been head of my mother’s coven all my life, and therefore in many ways he was my spiritual leader too.

  I had of course forsaken my calling half a lifetime ago, and now I wasn’t sure how warmly I would be received. Nonetheless, I had to try.

  As I walked up his gravel driveway, I spotted him pottering in his cluttered garage. The doors had been pulled wide open, displaying shelves crammed with neatly labelled plastic boxes of metal, rubber, glass, and wired components, and myriad other random items. He appeared to be tinkering with a child’s tricycle.

  When he noticed me hovering outside, he lay his tools down and walked towards me with an uneven gait. Hunched over, his gnarled fingers gripped a hand-carved walking stick.

  “Alfhild,” he greeted me in his sing-song fashion. “I left the kettle singing on the stove. Come. Come.”

  Of course he would have been aware I was visiting even though I had arrived unannounced.

  I followed him as he slowly manoeuvred around the side of the garage to his back garden, beautifully laid out in its summer splendour, a mix of herbs and flowers, fruits and vegetables. Shadowmender was obviously a green fingered wizard, and this was a suburban paradise. I climbed up a step into his kitchen. As soon as the back door had been closed behind us, he straightened up, flexed his hands, then threw his walking stick towards the hall. It twirled in the air, flew the four or five yards, and landed perfectly in place on the umbrella stand.

  “You aren’t surprised to see me,” I said and his watery blue eyes sparkled with mischief.

  “Of course not. All things are foretold if you know what to look for.”

  He indicated a door to the right. “Come through, come through,” he said and almost skipped into his lounge. I remembered visiting this house with my mother soon after my father’s disappearance. From the outside it was very much a bog standard 1970s semi-detached, complete with double glazing and pebbledash finish. But once inside, you were transported into some late-eighteenth, early-nineteenth century alchemist’s hideaway. In the kitchen Shadowmender had a huge range, complete with cauldron, while in the living room, the walls were lined with oak shelving. Leather bound books with gilt lettering were piled high on every available surface. Odd gadgets, clocks, stuffed animals - and plenty of live ones too - completed the look. A fire burned in a Victorian grate, and yet the house did not have a chimney. It was quite extraordinary.

  Shadowmender pointed at a large over-stuffed chair, covered in midnight blue velvet. I shooed a sleeping tabby cat away so I could sit, fortunately not overly precious about cat hair on my dress. It would brush off.

  “How are you, Alf?” Shadowmender sank into his own chair with a sigh of relief.

  I knew he was referring to the death of my mother. “I’m okay,”
I replied. “I’ve been keeping busy.” Guiltily I realised I hadn’t been thinking of my mother overly much. We hadn’t been close and I hadn’t seen a great deal of her, so her loss hadn’t made any great impact

  “With Whittle Inn?” the Wizard smiled. “Ah.” Of course he would know about that too.

  “Yes. It needs a lot of work.”

  “And you need a huge amount of patience, no doubt. Although, I’m sure you’ll make a wonderful success of it, when the time comes.”

  “I do hope so.”

  We regarded each other for a moment, and I fidgeted in the chair.

  “What brings you here, Alf?” Shadowmender asked eventually.

  I blew the air out of my lungs. Where to start? I jumped in, my words faltering. “I want to pick up on my training. I’m having a few issues with people who seem to want to either scare me away from the inn, or force me into selling it, or even, I fear, who are seeking to destroy it. I want to be able to protect myself, and the inn, and Jed … my friend.”

  “Hmm.” Shadowmender regarded me thoughtfully before standing, and walking towards me, no trace of stiffness or disability. He took my head gently between his hands, tipping my face up and staring into my eyes. I watched his pupils widen. He stayed that way for some time, reaching deep inside me, delicately probing my head and my heart with his unbroken stare. Finally, he blinked and pulled his gaze away, without letting his hands drop.

  He increased the pressure on the sides of my skull. A sharp pain stabbed until he withdrew his hands slowly, pulling something out of my thoughts. His hands widened and the pain lessened until it disappeared completely. He brought his hands slowly together as though to clap. I caught a brief glimpse of something slick and black pulsing on his hand, the size of a small pebble, and then he crushed it between his hands. There was a small explosion of dust and a spitting sound and he shook his empty hands at the fire, and rubbed them on his gown.

  “You don’t need that,” he said gently, and I wondered what it had been.

  Next Shadowmender picked up a clear glass orb from the table next to him and held it up between us. It caught the light from the fire, and glittered in his hand. He turned it this way and that, studying what he could see within. I leaned in a little closer and spotted shadows racing across the surface of the glass, but nothing that I could read. He muttered something I couldn’t make out and twisted the orb sharply, then handed it to me. It was surprisingly heavy. I turned it as I’d seen Shadowmender do, and looked deep into the heart of the glass.

  “What do you see?” he asked.

  “I see the inn!” I said excitedly.

  “Good. Yes. How is it?”

  “It looks fine. Oh!” I laughed in delight as a tiny Jed walked across the middle of the orb from the inn to his van. It was like watching camera footage on my mobile. “There’s Jed. I wonder what he’s doing?” I watched him get in his van and drive off.

  “The inn is fine. Your friend is fine. You did a good job of warding negativity away from the inn.”

  I shook my head. “I should have walked the whole perimeter – all of my boundaries. My carelessness cost me the stable block.”

  “Perhaps,” Shadowmender acquiesced, and resumed his seat, “but given how long it’s been since you last practised magick of this kind, I’d say you did a very good job.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m sure you feel a little rusty, but trust me, everything you will need to see you through this trying time, all the skills and the powers and the strength, you have those within you. Call them out when you need them. Keep working on your skills.” Shadowmender nodded. “Yes. Let magick into every aspect of your life. But honestly? You’ve probably been doing that all along, even if you were in denial about who you are and what you’re capable of.”

  He was right of course.

  “You were an excellent student. Your skills will flood back when you allow them to.”

  “So no more training?”

  “You can practise on your own. You’ll make mistakes of course, but that’s how we all learn, Alf. How we become stronger and wiser.” He shifted in his seat. “But don’t be afraid to seek help from the Elders, or from our coven. We will always be with you one way or another. Just as your ancestors are.”

  His words had great wisdom. If I allowed my thoughts and senses to run free and easy, if I allowed my being to stray beyond restricted boundaries, if I allowed myself to be open to all there was, I would be a better witch. Compassion, kindness, empathy sensitivity, strength and love. Those were the gifts bestowed upon me to make use of as I deemed fit.

  “If there are gaps in your knowledge, and of course there are bound to be, make use of the library in Wisdom House. Your membership has never lapsed, you know.”

  Of course, Wisdom House on Celestial Street. Many an hour I’d spent in there, scrunched over an ancient and scarred desk, carved with the initials of hundreds of scholars before me, hidden among the centuries old shelving. It had been a favourite hangout of mine, even after my father had gone. It provided an escape from the world, and far from simply stocking tomes of historical magic and folk lore, it had quite often had the latest comics and magazines of a purely secular nature. I suppose the thinking was, how else would some traditional and dyed-in-the-wool magickal folk comprehend the world they found themselves living in without the tools to instruct them? Hooray for Cosmopolitan and Country Life magazines.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I should take the craft more seriously. Thank you for the pointers.”

  “That’s what I’m here for. To help you grow and learn. We all need to keep doing so, no matter how old and decrepit we get.” He laughed and his wizened face lit up with amusement.

  “There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about,” I said, and I burrowed around in my bag for my notebook, handing it over to Shadowmender, open at the page I wanted him to study.

  He glanced at my drawing, his brow furrowed. “Where have you seen this?” he asked. In among all the drawings and plans I had made for the inn, I had created a rough sketch of the ring I’d seen on the body outside the inn, and coloured it the best I could – red and gold - but not quite recreating the spectacular shimmer of the gold shooting through the ruby.

  “It was on the body I found outside the inn the afternoon I arrived.” Shadowmender nodded his understanding. He’d obviously heard of the incident.

  “What happened to the ring, do you know?”

  “I assume the police have it. It was still on his body when they took him away.”

  “That’s a shame.” Shadowmender stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Have you heard of the Circle of Querkus?”

  “No.”

  “They are a secretive all-male band of warlocks, witches and druids. Not to be messed with. They are ancient protectors of forests and woodlands. Membership is top secret. On the whole their intentions are good, but their methods are shadowy to say the least. Over the past century or so, there have been rumours that certain factions within the Circle have gone rogue.”

  I was puzzled. “Meaning what?”

  “Certain members have broken away and formed a group known as The Mori. Their heads have been turned. It’s the usual story. Money, power. Instead of providing protection for the great woodland spaces across the world, they are desperate to see off their brothers, the Circle of Querkus, and have free rein of the land left behind. They can only do that by destroying every hectare of forest they can lay their hands to, because when there are no woodlands there will be no need for the powerful Circle of Querkus. To that end they are in league with mere mortals, an uneasy and unnatural alliance for temporary and gutless glory.” Shadowmender held my gaze. “I can’t reiterate strongly enough that The Mori should not be trifled with. Rumours abound of corruption at the highest levels, of blackmail, treachery, murder. That ring – in green – would be recognisable as something the Circle of Querkus would wear. The red tells us it is The Mori.”

  “The murder
victim was a member of The Mori?”

  “It would appear so.”

  I was more confused than ever. “So what do they want with the inn?”

  “I would assume it is not Whittle Inn that is of interest to them.”

  His words drew me up short. How stupid of me. “No, of course it isn’t,” I clapped a hand to my head in alarm. “The inn and the grounds are incidental. But it sits in the estate that I inherited, a great portion of which is entirely woodland, and is part of a much larger forest area around Whittlecombe. Speckled Wood is the thin end of the wedge.”

  “There you have it,” Shadowmender said calmly enough, but his face was troubled.

  “How do I ward off an army of The Mori, intent on destroying my trees?” I asked in horror.

  “Not an army,” Shadowmender insisted forcefully. “Don’t worry on that score. But they do box clever. They will have a team of mortals helping them, because that’s the way the world works in the twenty-first century. They need the bureaucrats and the local politicians. They need administrators and bankers. You mustn’t trust anyone.”

  Aghast, I thought of the villagers back in Whittlecombe, of Rhona and Stan, Millicent and Jed, Talbot-Lloyd and everyone else I had met over the weeks, and the sudden sense of isolation completely took the wind out of my sails. “Oh,” I said. “I’ve been so naïve.” My knees quivered and I was glad to be seated.

  Shadowmender reached over and patted my hand. “It is fortuitous indeed that you found your way here today. I will send people to you. Together they can cast a wider circle of protection around the inn and Speckled Wood.” He smiled wryly. “And you won’t feel so alone.”

  Tears pricked at my eyelids. He understood then. “Thank you,” I whispered.

  “You’ll also need to fight back against those who might use ‘legal’ means to rob you of what is rightfully yours.” He emphasised the word legal. “These constructs that humankind creates. Watch out for them. Compulsory purchase. Town planning and the like. The Mori will have friends in high places, you’ll need to keep a careful eye out. Who is your lawyer?”