Here Be Witches

by Sarah Mussi

  Meryl

  I’m coming over.

  Rhiannon

  I’m sorry. I REALLY am. *If you get this: Please DON’T tell George.*

  If I get this?

  Is she for real?

  I text Meryl back:

  Ellie

  Thanks Meryl, you r my best friend. Cos you really care, but I’m OK. I’m going to George’s.

  George starts the Land Rover up. And we head through Caernarfon towards the mountains.

  And Gran starts.

  N.B. she is wearing a wildly colourful yellow shawl with pink and orange swirls. Underneath is a throwback item to her youth: a purple velvet waistcoat. But her words are a stark contrast to her get-up.

  ‘Wales is in great danger,’ she says. ‘If I am not mistaken, today is the first day of the end of the world.’

  NINE

  ‘Yesterday at midnight, the high magick was broken,’ says Granny Jones.

  George turns the car radio off, so we can hear.

  ‘There are now no constraints holding back the Olde Deepe Magicke.’ She nods gravely. ‘It’s going to be bedlam.’

  ‘How? I don’t get it,’ says George.

  ‘The Olde Deepe Magicke is a system of enchantments that little is known about, other than by those who seek it; those who travel west, with the words of power – but there are some things commonly known.’ Gran leans forward to address me from the back seat.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It is wild and powerful and must be brought under control.’

  ‘Right,’ says George. ‘Bit like me then.’

  That actually makes me smile.

  ‘You’ll need to tell me everything that’s happened, Ellie, as soon as you can.’

  I nod. I still don’t really trust myself to speak.

  ‘When you’re ready,’ says Gran.

  I gaze out of the Land Rover window. The mist closes in tightly around us. My breath steams up the glass. A white haze appears on the pane. I inhale, swallow the lump in my throat and tell myself self-pity is a character flaw.

  I love Meryl. I hate Rhiannon.

  ‘OK,’ I say. My voice wobbles a bit but I tell them everything: from staying up late last night watching Horror Her, to George’s text, the pings I got from Rhiannon, the bike ride up the mountain, how the Brenin Llwyd chased me into the dark – almost into the path of the rockfall – how I got to Dinas Emrys, what I saw and learnt there, and how Rhiannon accused me. I tell them about the police cell, and the ghostly nun.

  All the time I’m talking, Gran does not say a word. I keep glancing at her, but she stares fixedly ahead out of the car window. By the time we reach our turning, up towards Snowdon and the dirt track that takes us along the side of Moel Cynghorion, to her little cottage, I’m just about through. My voice is steadier. I’ve stopped apologising every three minutes for the random, weird, bonkers nature of it all.

  George flashes me a smile and nods his head, as if I’ve been talking about a shopping trip, and am explaining the ins and outs of a new laptop I just bought.

  ‘I see,’ says Gran at last.

  I wait for more, but she says nothing. I glance back at her. Her mouth is a tight straight line.

  I start to get worried.

  Something inside me is saying: this is serious. This is so flipping serious, you don’t even know how serious it is. This is more than just me and Henry and true love. This is … but I can’t think what it is, and nothing feels more serious than the way I feel about Henry.

  We come to a halt on the slope outside her cottage. I go to get down from the Land Rover. But Gran stops me. ‘Wait child,’ she says. ‘It’s not safe for you at the moment. Now we are on the mountain, the Coraniaid will be listening.’1

  ‘The Coraniaid?’

  Gran lays a thin finger over her lips.

  A light dusting of snow has coated the yard. Snowdon looms hazily above us. A chill wind blows. The daffodils that looked so spring-like yesterday have bent stalks; their heads hang. Some are flattened. I look around; other things are flattened too. And in the light dusting of snow, I see great swirls like wide white footprints.

  ‘The Coraniaid, AKA dwarf-goblins,’ says George, winking at me.

  Gran gets down from the Land Rover and traces a circle three times around it. As she does, she chants in Welsh.

  Fel hyn y mae awr y gormesoedd yn dychwelyd

  A drechwyd gan Feibion Beli Mawr

  Yn yr hen flynyddoedd drwy rym hud …

  Since the events of last New Year, I try all the time with my Welsh, and I think she’s saying something like this. (But maybe it scans and sounds a bit better in Welsh, and is sort of more spooky, but here’s the full English translation.)

  So does the hour of the gormesoedd, return,

  Laid low by the Sons of Beli Mawr.

  In olden years through the magick’s power,

  And can we the cures of yesteryear relearn?

  Of Lludd helped by his brother Llefelys,

  Like Nuada Silver-Hand and Lugh and thus,

  Vanquish the dwarf and dragon white,

  Strike hard against the giant’s might,

  Win against three magical trials,

  To save again our homeland Wales,

  Give me heroic valour and witches’ spell,

  To cure the ill and makes things well.

  Gran turns towards Snowdon. She holds up her hand in the kind of gesture I’ve seen her do before when she was trying to protect me from the curse of the dragons. Then she goes into her garden and plucks some herbs from her little border. I sit in the car. George mumbles, ‘You know … you should know by now … totally batty … but you gotta let her … ’

  I shush him. I trust Gran. I watch.

  After a bit, she appears back at the Land Rover. She comes up to my side and opens the door. She gives me the herbs. She says, ‘It is now safe to get down. Come – we’ll have something to eat and I’ll explain everything I can. But do not say any word further – on any matter – until I say so.’

  —

  I drink huge cups of tea and eat a massive wedge of cake; George goes out and brings in fresh logs for the fire. We bank it up and soon have a roaring blaze going. Gran pulls up the sofa and pats it, encourages me to lie down. And I do. She covers me over with a knitted blanket. ‘Rest,’ she says. ‘I don’t suppose you got much in that cell … you’ve a long journey ahead … you must take heart, stay strong … ’

  George hangs over the arm of the sofa, really near my face, and every now and then I have to shove his elbow off when it catches a strand of my hair.

  ‘Ouch!’

  George backs off a bit, pulling a sorry-but-how-can-I-not-lurk-over-you-when-you-are-lying-down-in-front-of-me look.

  And Gran does one of her usual nutjob things. She passes a piece of copper pipe to me and one to George. I think they are short bits left over from some kitchen plumbing. I raise one eyebrow at George. Definitely weird.

  ‘This is very important,’ she says. ‘Because of the Coraniaid, we must only talk to each other through copper.’

  ‘Ohhh-kay,’ says George and rolls his eyes at me.

  I put the piece of pipe to my lips and find it’s pretty difficult to speak through it. I have to kind of purse my lips and hiss.

  ‘Good,’ hums Gran through her piece of piping. She settles herself down in her rocking chair. ‘Now you are a little stronger and we are protected with some temporary charms, I’m going to tell you something.’ Her hissy voice through the copper sends shivers down my spine.

  ‘Why have we got to talk through leftover kitchen waste?’ sounds George back.

  ‘Sior, stop it. I want you to listen, very carefully.’

  George waves an imaginary wand over himself and mouths, abracadabra. I. Am. Listening. Then he mimes being all ears.

  I shoot him a get-serious-Sior look, and nod my head. I’ve learnt from experience that when Gran has something important to say, it’s best to get serious. (I wrote down ev
erything that happened around Christmas which made me arrive at this conclusion. You can read it if you want. It’s in a manuscript called Here Be Dragons. Send me a note and I’ll get you a copy.)

  ‘We are caught in the middle of an age-old battle,’ Gran hisses very dramatically through her piece of copper piping. ‘A war as old as Snowdon itself, from a time when great creatures walked the earth, and the Olde Deepe Magicke was abroad.’

  ‘Please Nan, not “Ye Olde Deepe Magicke”,’ says George trying to aim his words into his pipe. ‘Let’s think practically first: we need to get Ellie a lawyer or something, and plan what we’re going to say to Rhiannon.’

  Gran ignores him. ‘What you need to understand is that these mountains hold great power,’ she pauses, then hisses very dramatically, ‘and there are those that would like to steal that power and harness it for their own evil ends.’

  I put the copper pipe to my lips. ‘What’s happened to Henry?’ I ask.

  ‘The ancient battle between the Red and White Dragons is being played out, right now, and we are part of it … ’

  George stands up, shoves his chest out and says, ‘Fe fi fo fum’.

  ‘Sior!’ shushes Grannny. ‘If you climb to the top of Yr Wyddfa and look out over the mountains can you doubt Snowdonia is a stronghold of power?’

  George raises one shoulder, lets it drop, rolls his eyes and sits down.

  ‘But why? That is the question you must ask. Why must these two dragons continually be at war?’

  I know he feels embarrassed. I do too. I mean, even if she’s right, she doesn’t have to go all Gandalf on us.

  ‘It is because the evil White Dragon of Wessex wishes to dominate the world, but until he can subdue Wales and break the High Magick of Merlin and take the Golden Throne of Arthur, he is trapped and cursed and doomed to fail.’

  I nod my head. Maybe she is a kind of Gandalf.

  ‘But our mountains are not undefended.’ Gran pulls her shawl closer. ‘They have heroes who have sworn to protect them, to protect the powers that lie beneath them. We have Henry, the Red Dragon, and Owain Glyndwr and Saint David – but how far we can count on their aid I do not know, so you must understand the stakes, the danger – and the fact that our chances of success are very slim – before we decide what to do.’

  Gran stops and even though it’s broad daylight, she goes across and closes the curtains. I look up at George. He looks down at me. A mission? He raises his eyebrows in quick succession. We nod and silently agree to let her talk.

  BTW: George has uberly lush eyebrows.

  ‘On this mission,’ breathes George enthusiastically, possibly to make up for being so sceptical, ‘do I get to use my new axe?’

  Gran holds up her hand and silences him. She seems to be listening intently.

  ‘OK, then just remind me why we’ve got to talk through these pipes again?’ whispers George.

  ‘I’ve told you already – the Coraniaid,’ hisses Gran.

  ‘Ooh-kaay,’ says George.

  ‘The Coraniaid have hearing powers that are magical. If they overhear us, they will know our plans and tell our enemies. Only the element of copper is alien to them, so we are safe if we speak through it.’

  ‘We have a plan?’ I raise my eyebrows.

  ‘Ahhh,’ says George. Like, what a dummy I am. That was so totally obvious. ‘So right now you think the Coraniaid – little dwarfs, possibly with long beards – are listening to us?’

  ‘Obviously,’ hisses Gran back. ‘Do you think I whisper through bits of old plumbing for fun?’

  ‘But,’ I say through my copper pipe, ‘I don’t understand what’s happened? Why, since this morning, has everything gone weird.’

  ‘I will try to explain,’ she says. ‘First of all, you realise that yesterday, being the 29th of February, was an auspicious day – it marks a leap year. And a leap year is one of the years that counts in the precession of the equinoxes – it shifts the constellation of Draco around the Pole Star.’

  ‘Ah, the constellation of Draco,’ I murmur. The great God of Dragons.

  ‘It is through eighteen leap years that the Red Dragon must wait under the mountain, before he is allowed to walk abroad as a man.’

  Yes, she’s right. I learned that at Christmas. Henry must lie for seventy-two years under Snowdon before he can come back as a man – a boy really – because he can only ever be eighteen years old.

  Which is a painful point, because, if I live long enough to see him again, I’ll be like, old. Eighty-eight in fact.

  ‘And then he only has eighteen days, between the feast of St Lucy on the 13th of December – once the feast day of the winter solstice – until New Year’s Eve. Eighteen days when he can walk abroad, free from the curse of Merlin – as a man – or fly to the stars as a dragon.’

  I’m not sure why Gran is reminding me of all this. She knows it’s a sore (heart-breaking) point. Sometimes I think she is cunningly trying to get in a plug for George, who obvs is her grandson and somebody she might prefer me to fancy. I try to send her a shush-now-this-is-all-very-upsetting look. And she fails to read it.

  ‘Eighteen days only, to do what he can to try to defend Wales. After that the Red Dragon must return to the cave under Dinas Emrys.’ She sends me back a wake-up-to-the-truth-because-there-are-more-boys-than-one-on-this-planet look.

  But I notice she’s missed out the key bit of info, like during those eighteen days he is also supposed to be looking for his true love: moi.

  Don’t get me wrong. George is well fit and everyone fancies him. It’s just that I don’t.

  So I sigh, and remember instead that evening, high up on the mountain at Halfway House, when Henry told me all this and far more. My breath catches; will I ever see him again?

  George intuitively reaches out, strokes my hand.

  ‘And it was on that very night, yester-eve, when the witches came upon the witching hour to Dinas Emrys.’ Gran gets into full poetic-Wicca mode. ‘The Supreme One came and using her evil art and black magick – tricked time itself – sped up the leap years, into a mere eighteen seconds, then froze time itself and opened up the cavern!’

  We watch as Gran dramatically throws one hand in the air. Both George and I jerk backwards and are suitably awed.

  ‘Knowingly, she released the Olde Deepe Magicke,’ repeats Gran fixing us with shining melodramatic eyes.

  ‘Then she must have released Oswald the White Dragon as well?’ I say.

  Gran nods, darts her eyes around the room, points emphatically to the pieces of copper piping. ‘With a sacrifice, just as the words of Draco’s spell demanded,’ she hisses.

  I think of Fiona’s broken body, twisted over the crystals. I remember the words of the spell that binds Oswald:

  ‘Give a woman to your heart and live as a man,

  Or to the cave under Snowdon as fast as you can.’

  And I shudder.

  ‘Henry too?’ I stare into Gran Jones’s keen blue eyes.

  Gran screws up her forehead.

  ‘Then where is he?’ My heartbeat quickens.

  ‘The Supreme One released all of the magic stored inside the mountains,’ says Gran. ‘So Henry too has been released, though in what form and under what enchantments, I don’t know.’

  George’s hand on mine tightens.

  ‘Yes,’ says Gran, ‘once the High Magick of Merlin is broken – the Olde Deepe Magicke is released – that is what Oswald desired more than anything – and it must be so, otherwise how can the Brenin Llwyd rise up so easily against a mountain girl and go down on to the high road by Nant Peris?’

  The temperature in the room seems to drops a few degrees.

  ‘How can a childhood friend turn against another, and accuse her of murder?’

  Gran fixes me with a meaningful stare.

  ‘How can the nun of The Black Boy Inn walk abroad through Caernarfon to strangle an innocent?’2

  An icy chill descends on the room.

  ‘And how can the
Coraniaid have left their mark on my front garden? How can they?’

  The fire seems to splutter, punctuating a weird silence. And I imagine the Coraniaid all over the mountain, listening. Ugh. Creepy. Horrible.

  ‘And there are other things awake now,’ whispers Gran. ‘Things that know no allegiance to either dark or light.’

  ‘You better stick with me at all times,’ George hisses at me. ‘And hold my hand and snog me constantly.’ He raises his eyebrows in quick succession again.

  Not Funny George.

  ‘Yes,’ says Gran, ‘the White Dragon of Wessex, Oswald, walks abroad and is planning your downfall, Ellie. Of that we must be very sure.’

  ‘He better not cross me,’ threatens George.

  ‘But why me?’ I whisper very quietly into my pipe.

  ‘Because, Ellie, you have crossed him and got the better of him once already, and that he does not forgive.’

  I think of that last fight in the cave, how the flowers of Blodeuwedd spoiled his aim, how Gran’s potion overcame him, how George’s axe wounded him. ‘We’ve all crossed him,’ I whisper. ‘He will not forgive any of us.’

  George eyes his new axe, lying against a pile of hewn logs by the fire. ‘I don’t forgive him either,’ he says.

  ‘And you should know by now, the world of magic is not new to you,’ adds Gran through her copper piece. ‘You, Ellie, with your love for Henry, are the one weak link in Oswald’s plan. True love is always their weakest link. It is as wild as the deepest magic and, some believe, more powerful.’

  ‘I wish,’ sighs George.

  I know better than to doubt her words.

  ‘They will try at every turn to eradicate you, already they have tried thrice today.’

  I gulp. A shadow seems to fall across the room. The fire splutters again. George bends down and picks up his new Husqvarna Forest, hickory, long-handled, steel, hand-forged axe. (I know those details are accurate. Believe me, I had to listen to its comparative virtues against the Estwing E24A Sportsman’s Axe with leather grip, which, btw, he also insisted on having.)