And then, it was gone. The room was quiet and still once more, save for the pounding of my own startled heart.
That night I was unable to sleep. Indeed, I did not so much as go to my bed, but instead sat in the kitchen on a wooden chair that would not allow me to slip into slumber. He was near. I could feel it. I could sense him. At times I could hear whispering. I contemplated waking Tegan, but decided against it, reasoning that come morning she would be better able to face whatever came if she had rested. Whilst we remained inside the cottage, doors and windows locked, with me on my guard, Gideon would not be able to gain entry. He would also be stronger under the cover of darkness, so that we might venture out in daytime, so long as we kept together and kept alert for signs of imminent danger.
How had I brought us to this moment? How had it happened that we should have to face him again? What could I have done differently to spare Tegan such peril? When she came downstairs and found me at my vigil she knew at once that our situation had become grave.
“Elizabeth! Are you all right? What happened? Did you see him? Has he been here?” She knelt beside my chair, snatching up my hand. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“I am quite well; please, do not fret on my account.”
“But he was here, wasn’t he?”
I nodded. “He remains close.”
“Did he hurt you?”
I shook my head. “We are well enough protected, in here.”
She got to her feet. “We can’t stay indoors forever.”
“He will be less powerful while the sun is up.”
She began to pace the room, already the idea of being contained pressing upon her. “I wish we could force him to confront us in daytime somehow. There must be a way we could lure him out. God, I’d like the chance to deal with him! Once and for all.”
“Be careful what you wish for.” I stood up stiffly and filled the kettle, attempting to stir my aching body to action. I opened the stove door and fed in another applewood log. It was the last from the basket.
“I’ll fetch more,” Tegan said, plucking her coat from the hook on the back of the door and stepping into her boots.
“Wait…”
“Elizabeth, we can’t lock ourselves away. It’ll be OK. I’m just getting some wood.”
I watched her go, knowing she was right; we could not become prisoners in our own home. Even so, my pulse quickened at the thought of her out there alone. I hastened to put on my own outdoor clothes and followed her into the garden. At the far end of the vegetable patch she was already using the axe to split logs. She hefted the blade with ease and strength, each blow striking with good aim, slicing through the seasoned wood. With a shudder I experienced a vision of Gideon similarly employed, long, long ago, deep in Batchcombe Woods. I had been younger even than Tegan then.
“We need more milk,” she said, not in the least out of breath, “and butter. I’ll go to the shop when I’ve finished here.”
She did not meet my eye, but I knew what lay behind her words. The idea of tempting Gideon out of wherever he was hiding, of provoking him into showing his hand in daylight, clearly was uppermost in her mind. She had already told me she would not run. Now it was clear to me she was not prepared to wait, either.
“I’ll come with you,” I said.
“It really doesn’t take two of us to buy a pint of milk,” she said, turning to look at me.
“I will come with you,” I insisted.
The village had altered little during the years of my absence. Ducks still lived on the green, frequenting muddy patches of snow where local people threw bread and scraps for them. The short run of redbrick houses had their own thatch of snow, while the reed-thatched cottages sat under fat layers of white as if their roofs were several sizes too big for them. Everything was pretty and as picturesque in the quaint way only an English village can be, and yet I saw danger skulking in every shadow; threat lurking around each corner. If Tegan was enduring the same heightened sense of anxiety she did not show it. We walked briskly along the slippery pavement. A small white van drove slowly past, its wheels swooshing through the smear of melting snow on the road. I could not stop myself from glancing in through the windshield to swiftly scrutinize the driver. What was I expecting to see? Would Gideon disguise himself, or would he brazenly confront us? The latter seemed more in keeping with his arrogant nature. The sun flared against the glass and obscured my view. An intrepid jogger puffed past us, causing me to step closer to Tegan. She took my arm.
“It’s OK, Elizabeth. Really, it will be OK,” she said, so that I wondered who was protecting whom.
Once inside the shop Tegan began filling a wire basket with essential items. I did my utmost to turn my attention to the matter of our stores, but such a strong sense of unease gripped me that I was unable to concentrate. A young woman glanced in my direction as she rounded the end of an aisle and I was certain I saw her irises glow red. I followed her, only to see her chat happily with the shopkeeper, who evidently knew her well. Two teenage boys entered noisily through the shop door, jostling one another in a good-humored way, and yet one seemed to me to be possessed of unnaturally sharp teeth, and the other I could swear had a tongue that was disturbingly long. I plucked goods from the shelves and hurried Tegan to the counter to pay for them. My witch senses were not trying to trick me. I knew that, in reality, none of the people in the shop presented a danger. It was the proximity of a very real threat that caused me to see such warning signs. Gideon was near, and he was not about to leave without what he had come for. I was convinced it was Tegan, and not myself, that would be his target.
We arrived back at the cottage to find a man up a ladder. When I gasped Tegan smiled.
“It’s just Ted,” she told me. “He’s been cleaning windows in the village for years. Morning, Ted!” she called up to him. He paused in his cheery whistling to wave a sponge at us before resuming his work. “You’re being paranoid, Elizabeth. That’s exactly what Gideon would want. I’m not going to live like that,” she said, taking the goods she had purchased into the house.
I paused, watching the window cleaner. He descended the ladder and came over to me.
“Any chance of a refill?” he asked, holding out his yellow bucket.
“Of course,” I said, and took it from him. He picked up a dry cloth and began to polish the small window in the front door.
I left him and walked around to the back of the house, using the garden tap to fill the bucket with freshwater. I told myself Tegan was right, I was overreacting. Of course we had to keep our guard up, but we could not exist in such a heightened state of suspicion. What manner of life would that be? But as I turned off the tap I experienced such a shock of fear I dropped the bucket. Water flooded down the path while I listened, nausea threatening to overwhelm me, to the familiar tune the window cleaner was now whistling. At first I thought—I hoped—that I was mistaken. But, no. It was that tune. “Greensleeves.” Gideon’s tune. I ran to the front of the house, not knowing what I would do, only aware that I had to confront him outside, here, in the open, to keep him away from Tegan.
As I rounded the corner of the cottage the whistling continued, but to my astonishment I saw Ted lying on the ground. He was motionless and silent, the dreadful tune not coming from his lips. He was not breathing, and the moment I touched him I knew he was dead. His eyes stared up at me in surprise, as if he might have lost his footing and fallen from his ladder. But I knew he had been working on the downstairs windows while he waited for the water. I knew he had not fallen. With awful finality, the whistling ceased.
“Tegan!” I cried as I raced back to the kitchen door and flung myself through it. Her boots were in the hallway, the snow still melting on them, forming little pools of icy water on the flagstones. The kettle was singing on the Aga. “Tegan?” I called, but she did not answer. I ran into the sitting room. Here there were signs of disturbance, of struggle. The coffee table was upended, candleholders and incense burners swept from the m
antelpiece and broken and on the floor. Tegan’s staff lay on the floor. The room stank; an acrid, musky smell that filled the air, making me gag. And Tegan was gone. Not simply gone from the room, or the house, but taken away. I knew it. I could feel it. I could sense a chasm of distance opening up between us, as if in an instant she had been transported to some far-off place.
A tiny movement in the hearth startled me. At first I could not make out what it was that snuffled and wriggled in the cooling ashes of the fireplace, but then I recognized the small shape.
“Aloysius!” I stooped down and took him in my hand. The poor mouse was trembling, his fur blackened and filthy with soot and ash, but he was otherwise unharmed. He looked at me, his bright eyes questioning. I knew Tegan would never have willingly left him behind. Tears blurred my vision. I had failed her. I had let him take her! For an instant I thought I could hear her voice calling me. I whipped about, searching, but she was not there.
“I will find you, Tegan!” I told her. “Wherever you are, do not lose heart. I promise I will come for you!”
4
The cottage felt achingly empty. It was not as if I was unaccustomed to solitude; indeed my long life had, of necessity, been a largely solitary one, but I felt Tegan’s absence keenly. To begin with there was my impotent rage at Gideon, and at myself for having let her down so catastrophically. Added to this was the panic-stirring anxiety over what she might suffer before I could find her. And then there was the lack of her, the hole left by her not being there. I knew this was in part due to having been separated from her for so long, and having only recently felt the sweetness of being reunited, however, there was more to it than that. I had not realized how her presence filled the house, how she somehow inhabited every corner of it, inside and out, charging the atmosphere with her singular spirit. For she was, now, a person of special qualities. Her latent magic, her dormant talents and gifts, had been brought forth by her years of study and application. Had been enhanced and developed, no doubt, by her proximity to other powerful witches who dedicated their lives to the craft in one form or another. I could not be certain how aware she herself was of her own abilities, but there was an unmissable energy about her that added oxygen to the air and Willow Cottage seemed a sorrowful, diminished place with her gone.
In the moments after Gideon had taken Tegan I did my utmost to gain clues as to where they might have gone. Aside from being alert to whispers from Tegan herself, should she try to reach me, I scoured the sitting room for signs of what form Gideon had taken. The previous night his dark energy had entered via the chimney—had this been sufficient for him to snatch Tegan? Or had he had some more tangible, physical presence? That furniture had been knocked over suggested a scuffle, or Tegan could have fallen against things herself whilst she was being abducted. Aloysius appeared to have been flung into the fireplace, but whether by a cruel hand or by a more magical force I could not tell. My investigations were interrupted by sounds from the front garden. Looking through the window, I was astonished to see the window cleaner up on his feet! I hastened outside. The poor man was clearly dazed and clutched at his head as if in pain, but he was very much alive.
“Ted, do you know what happened to you?”
“It’s all a bit fuzzy, to be honest. Must have fallen off my ladder. I don’t remember. Did I fall?”
“No, I don’t think you did. Can’t you recall anything? Anything at all?”
“It’s the weirdest thing, one minute I was standing by that window, I can remember that now, the next … nothing. Nothing until I woke up flat on my back in the snow. Feels like I banged my head, though. Do you think I could have slipped on the icy path?”
I sighed. Evidently he had no clear memory of what had befallen him, and therefore could not shed any light on how Gideon took Tegan.
“You are certain you didn’t see anyone?”
“Like who? No, I don’t think so.” He still appeared addled. Whatever spell had been inflicted on him to render him so convincingly lifeless had left him badly shaken.
“You’d better come inside,” I told him, and when he protested I pointed out he was in no condition to drive. “Ten minutes’ sit down and a cup of tea. Best to have you steady again before you get behind the wheel. And no more ladders for you today, I think.” I led him into the kitchen. It took a great deal of self-control to focus on Ted when my whole being was in turmoil. It seemed wrong to interrupt my search for Tegan but, in truth, I knew no amount of rushing blindly about would help me locate her. For the moment, Ted needed my attention, if he was not to compound his condition with a traffic accident. I allowed the healer in me to take over as I tended to him. As soon as he was safely on his way I would go to the pool in the back garden and cast a spell that it might show me where my dear girl had gone.
I knew I must wait until dark, for it was only beneath the moon that my searching-spell casting would be effective. The hours crawled by, but fortunately the days were still relatively short, so that it was only a little after six o’clock when I made my way to the far corner of the back garden. Aloysius hitched a ride in the pocket of my old woolen coat. He might not have known precisely what I was about, but I am certain he was aware that he would find his way back to his mistress only with my help, and so had decided not to let me out of his sight for a single second.
The sky was cloudless, blue-black, studded with bright stars and a helpfully luminous moon. The temperature had dropped again, so that the freshly frozen snow beneath my feet crunched as I walked to the small shrine beyond the vegetable patch. The running water of the stream was too quick-moving for ice to form over it, but where the day’s sun had caused snow to melt and drip from overhanging hazel and holly branches, stalactites of ice had grown, fringing the dark pool which sat in the crook of the hedge. I remembered well when I had moved into Willow Cottage how I had selected the flat stones that formed the little wall and plinth at the back of the pond. Onto these I placed a stout candle of beeswax and a simple clay incense burner, which I filled with juniper oil. I lit both, and the night air was quickly tinged with the scent of juniper berries. With not so much as a breeze to disturb the flame, the candlelight was steady and soothing. I set the mouse down at a respectful distance. He looked for all the world like a tiny snowball himself, but he did not appreciate his paws coming into contact with the freezing ground and scurried up into the hedge to settle instead upon a bare twig of holly. I proceeded beneath his beady gaze.
Taking a long, slow breath I closed my eyes and opened my arms and my heart to the Goddess.
“Beneath the cloak of sacred night, I ask for your help, Goddess of all the hours and all the weathers, keeper of nature’s wonders, guardian of all our best hopes and dreams. I pray that you will hear me, and answer my cry, for one of ours is lost. Her very soul in peril. Her life hangs by a thread.”
I opened my eyes and gazed down at the silky water of the pool, waiting, hoping. But no vision was shown me. No words laid upon my ear. Nothing. I called again, imploring the Goddess to come to our aid. A preternatural stillness descended. I waited, listening, not knowing what form any communication might take. A minute passed. And another. I repeated my words, solemnly, slowly, with care and sincerity. Still, there was no response. It was likely Gideon would have worked a spell to mask his location, but could he also have somehow contrived to block the ethereal conduit betwixt myself and deities or witches whose help I might try to elicit? It was a worrying thought. There was a small, sudden movement at the base of the hedge. I took a step back and peered into the shadows among the low branches and roots. As I watched, three tiny figures stepped out into the moonlight. Faeries! Such as I had not seen for many years. They were not the ordinary small folk common in these ancient woods, but smaller, brighter, more exotic beings. They did not wear clothes, but their bodies were covered in downy feathers, and their wings glistened as if made of crystal. Two of them appeared to be the male of the species and stood protectively on either side of the minute female w
hose eyes seemed to glow as she stared up at me. She had about her a regal bearing, and I have no doubt that she was indeed some manner of princess or even a queen. I gave a low bow. She responded with a brief dip of her tiny head. When, at last, she spoke her voice was sharp, almost painful to listen to, so that I had to guard against wincing, for it would not do to show any displeasure. I knew how honored I was that a highborn member of the faeries had chosen to reveal herself to me.
“The Goddess cannot answer you,” she told me, “for the path is not clear.”
“It is as I thought, then. Gideon has employed strong magic to cover his trail.”
“He has attached a hex to the words that will lead you to him. None of us can utter them without calamitous consequences.”
“I do not wish to put you at any risk of harm. Nor would Tegan wish me to do such a thing.”
“It is for Tegan that I came.”
“Do you know her?” I confess I was surprised.
The exquisite creature nodded. “We have been watching over her these past years. She is worthy of our protection, and we give it freely.”
“She is blessed to have such allies. If there is any help you are able to offer…”
“Tegan is in grave danger. You must go after her.”
“It is my intention, but I must know where she is.”
“I cannot speak of it. You will have to find her yourself. She is within your reach if only you stretch out your hand to her, but this will not be the case for very long. With each passing day she will slip further from you.”
“Within my reach? She has not been taken far? Please, if you can give me some small indication as to where…”
One of the male faeries leaned forward and whispered in his sovereign’s ear. They appeared to discuss the matter for a moment, and I noticed him indicate that it was not safe to linger, and that they should leave.
The Return of the Witch Page 4