The Witch's Guide to Magical Combat

by Lari Don

  “Just for fun,” said Innes.

  Molly frowned. “Maybe she doesn’t know they’re real people.”

  “Mrs Sharpe must have told her,” said Atacama.

  They looked at the witch in the corner, with her sagging face and unfocussed eyes, being bullied by her own knitting.

  Theo said, “Maybe she has. Maybe Estelle doesn’t listen any more.”

  “Then we have to tell her.” Molly walked round to the Chamber’s doorway. “Hello, Estelle.”

  The slim girl turned, light glinting from the metallic coils of her hair and her solid blue gem eyes.

  “Hello, Estelle. Do you remember me? I’m Molly. You cuddled me in October when you were a baby, and at Christmas we played hide and seek.”

  “I remember you, Molly. You used to be taller, and I thought you were pretty. But now I see you’re short and plain. Have you brought me tribute?”

  “Tribute? Em, no…” She glanced round at her friends, walking through the doorway to join her. “But we have brought important information, which is sort of like a tribute.”

  “Go on then.”

  Molly nodded. “Ok. The curses aren’t toys. You’re not watching a film or playing a game. Those boys are real, their pain and fear are real. When that boy is coughing up insects, his throat is hurting and his skin is crawling. All the victims in all the mirrors are real.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “You know?”

  “Obviously.” Estelle rolled her eyes. “I know you’re real, because I’ve met you, and I’ve seen your curse in its mirror. So I know those boys are real too, even if I haven’t met them.”

  Molly frowned. “You know they’re real, but you’re still charging up their curses?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  Estelle laughed. “It’s my job. I’m meant to put my energy into curses.”

  “You’re meant to maintain them,” said Theo, standing beside Molly. “You’re meant to put in just enough power to maintain the curse at the level the curse-caster intended. It’s your role to ensure the rules are kept, and lift the curse when the time is right. You must keep this arc in balance so you don’t destabilise the whole magical helix. You are the Promise Keeper.”

  “Yeah. I’m the Promise Keeper. It’s my power and this is what I choose to do with it. It’s more fun this way. Not so boring. Not as boring as knitting or tidying. Look!” She giggled. “I didn’t know that would happen! I charge them up, but I can’t be sure what the curse will do. Look!”

  Molly looked up at the screen. The beetles were attacking the boys, crawling onto their feet. Both boys were screaming, and more jewels and more insects were raining from their mouths. The jewels were vanishing moments after they hit the ground, and the insects were fading away, but not until they were halfway up the boys’ legs.

  Estelle laughed again.

  “Mrs Sharpe?” called Molly.

  The witch looked up. “Molly? Hello! How’s your hare? Or are you a mouse these days? That must be a nice change…”

  “Mrs Sharpe?” said Innes. “Are you alright?”

  Estelle smiled. “Mrs S is fine. She kept nagging me, so I found an old curse someone had put on her after a disagreement over magical knitting patterns and gave it some oomph. Now when she nags me, her knitting strangles her. She’s much less annoying! But she doesn’t appreciate my Curse TV. I hope you will. Pull the chairs over, let’s watch together.”

  Molly looked round. In the chaos, she saw three kinds of mirrors: ones with ordinary surfaces, ones with glowing surfaces and ones with fractured surfaces.

  “Have you been breaking curses too?”

  “Not on purpose. But victims often become really keen to get rid of a curse that’s been charged up. A few victims have already defeated their curse-casters, or done dangerous tasks to lift their curses, which means more broken mirrors and more dead crows. And the curse-hatched are so pretty when they fall. The light on the feathers, the descending spiral… The bird flies up alive and tumbles down dead. It’s like a metaphor. For something. I’m sure I could write poetry about it, if I could be bothered.

  “It’s fun watching the curse victims suffer. It’s fun watching the crows fall. Otherwise nothing happens here. So, sit with me! Mrs S, bring us popcorn and nachos. We’ll have a sleepover and watch curses together.”

  Mrs Sharpe stood up, still wrapped in her stripy knitting, and shuffled to the door.

  “Please, Estelle. This isn’t what Keepers do,” said Theo. “Being a Keeper is a huge responsibility, you have to take it seriously, not use it for entertainment.”

  “Oh, shut up about responsibility. Mrs S says this is just a phase and I’ll grow out of it. Let’s enjoy it while we can! I hardly ever have visitors.” She smiled at Snib. “Though your brother has been sneaking in sometimes. Corbie loves watching the curses. He likes being helpful too. He’s tightened up the Hall’s security, he’s even started to suggest which curses I should charge up. But it’s my game, I get to decide. So, crow-girl, you sit and watch too.”

  Snib backed away from her.

  Estelle frowned. “I order you to sit with me, crow.”

  “No!” said Snib. “What you’re doing is cruel. You have to stop.”

  “No one talks to me like that.” Estelle slammed her foot on the stone floor and the floor cracked. “You will join me, laugh at these pathetic victims, eat snacks with me and pick up my crumbs. But you will not tell me what to do.”

  “Someone has to tell you,” said Innes gently. “You used to be so kind to your dolls and teddies. You could be kind to these people too.”

  “Kind is weak and boring. If you’re going to be boring, Innes, just go away.”

  She laid her hand on the mirror again. One boy spat out a stag beetle, the other coughed as a jewelled choker forced its way out of his mouth. Estelle giggled.

  Molly walked up to her and took the mirror from her hand. “No, Estelle. We can’t sit and watch, because that would be cruel, and we can’t leave, because that would be abandoning these poor people.”

  A voice called from the doorway, “Salty popcorn or sweet, my dear?”

  “Both!” Estelle yelled. “And chocolate truffles.” She grinned at Molly. “Or she could bring cheese for you to nibble as a mouse, or mud for you to squirm through as a worm…”

  Molly put the mirror carefully on the table. “Please stop. Please take your extra power out of all these glowing mirrors.”

  “No. I don’t want to. And you can’t make me. No one can make me!” Estelle’s voice became louder, sharper, harder, and she lifted one hand. All the cracked and fractured mirrors, from all the broken curses, rose off the floor, floating up to Molly’s head height.

  “GET OUT!” screamed Estelle. The mirrors fell to the stone floor. They shattered, in an ear-bursting crash.

  Shards of glass bounced high off the floor. But the shards didn’t fall back down. The blades of glass danced in the air, glittering like dust in a sunbeam, though much bigger, much sharper.

  “Get out! If you won’t be my friends and enjoy my hobbies with me, then get out and leave me alone.”

  The glass daggers cut through the air towards Molly and her friends, slicing straight towards their scalps and eyes and faces.

  Chapter Eleven

  Molly and her friends ducked, and the slivers of glass swooped through the air just above their heads.

  The cloud of broken glass swerved round and swooped back again, even lower, even closer. Molly dragged Theo and Snib under the table. Innes and Atacama crowded in with them.

  The glass scratched across the tabletop.

  “The Keeper is not going to listen to reason,” said Theo. “We have to leave.”

  “But what about Molly’s curse?” asked Atacama.

  “And the threatened curse-hatched?” asked Snib.

  “And the curse victims?” asked Molly.

  “She’s too powerful. We have to retreat, for now.”

&nbs
p; The glass fell to the ground with a smash, breaking into smaller brighter splinters. “Maybe she’s changed her mind about attacking us,” whispered Molly.

  Then each skelf of glass stood up on its sharpest tip, and the shining fragments scraped along the stone floor towards the group under the table.

  The glass gouged lines in the rock, making the just audible screeching sound of a fork on a plate of baked beans.

  “She’s not going to change her mind,” said Innes. “We’d better run!”

  They scrambled out from under the table.

  Estelle yelled after them, “That’ll teach you not to nag me!”

  In the doorway, they collided with Mrs Sharpe. She dropped the bowls of popcorn and sweeties she’d been carrying in her wool-wrapped arms. “Dearie me,” she said loudly. “I’d better tidy that up.”

  As Mrs Sharpe bent down to pick up the bowls, she whispered to Molly, “Ask the crow about the box. The box will stop the Keeper—” The wool round the witch’s neck was creeping up to her face. She muttered, in a muffled voice, “Dearie me, what a mess… You’d better go, now.”

  They sprinted across the courtyard, running from the broken glass chasing them and from the Promise Keeper yelling, “Don’t come back or I’ll make every curse in Scotland so heavy that the land sinks into the sea!”

  Molly heard glass scraping on stone behind them, as they ran down the white tunnel.

  “Leaving in a hurry?” said the tallest mosaic man. “That’s a bit suspicious.”

  “We don’t need a token to leave,” gasped Molly. “Let us past.”

  The mosaic man laughed and stepped out of the way.

  As they crashed through the door into Craigvenie, Molly looked back and saw a new figure joining the mosaic men. A figure made of silvered glass fragments.

  They stumbled and tripped to the ground in front of the perfectly posed Caracorum. Molly slammed the door shut, while Snib pulled Innes to his feet and Atacama untangled his claws from Theo’s cloak.

  Atacama said, “Tell me, sister, who gave you that new riddle? Was it Corbie, the crow?”

  Caracorum smiled sweetly. “I don’t know. I was given my instructions by the senior sphinxes. I don’t ask awkward questions. That’s why I sit beside a pyramid guarding this important door, while you sit beside a purple recycling bin guarding the back door of a sweetie shop.”

  Atacama stalked away from his smirking sister.

  As his friends followed him between the pyramids, Innes said, “That trip to the Hall didn’t go spectacularly well.”

  “Nonsense,” said Theo. “We know much more about what’s happening to the curses now.”

  “Corbie must know what’s happening too,” said Snib, “if he’s watching those nasty images with the Keeper. I don’t understand why he’s encouraging her, when those charged-up curses are a threat to us as well as to you.”

  “But don’t the curse-hatched grow bigger and stronger when she charges up a curse?” asked Molly. “Like the black eagle linked to the curse Innes cast on his dad?”

  “Yes, he was bigger and stronger. And now he’s dead because Innes lifted the curse when he realised it was getting out of control.”

  “Perhaps Corbie will risk a small number of dead curse-hatched,” said Theo, “if he can gain a large number of stronger ones. There will always be victims like Molly whose curse-casters refuse to lift their curses.”

  “I’m not a victim,” said Molly. “When we find Mr Crottel, I’ll give him one last chance to lift this curse and if he refuses again, I’ll force him to lift it.”

  Innes grinned at her. “Are you going to claim your ancestors’ power and become a witch to defeat him in magical combat?”

  “I hope I don’t have to.” Molly sighed. “But perhaps there isn’t any other way…”

  “Let’s sit down over there.” Atacama pointed to a clump of silver birches at the edge of the nearest field. “Well away from my annoying sister. ”

  They clambered over the fence into the field behind the distillery car park. In the summer the field was stocked with half a dozen Highland cattle as background for tourists’ selfies, but in the winter it was empty.

  Once he’d settled down under the trees and scratched his left ear, Atacama said, “Here’s what we know. The Promise Keeper is already a teenager and has decided to use her power to charge up curses. And one of those charged-up curses has turned Mrs Sharpe into a dottled old wifie with a knitting habit who can’t stop the Keeper.”

  “We’d better stop her,” said Molly.

  Innes said, “We should set you up in combat against Mr Crottel first.”

  “We don’t know where Mr Crottel ran off to, but he certainly wasn’t heading back to his house. So let’s concentrate on Estelle. If we can prevent her charging up curses, then mine should go back to normal anyway. How can we do that?”

  “Did you ask her nicely?” asked the tree above Molly.

  They all looked up.

  Beth was sitting cross-legged in the branches of the tallest birch tree.

  Innes said, “I thought you were staying in your wood from now on.”

  She shrugged. “I wanted to check you were alright. And I wanted a look at your new friend.”

  Snib smiled and waved.

  Beth glared at her. Then she looked at Molly. “I’m not going to put my trees in danger, but I might have useful suggestions for you.”

  “Like stopping the big bad wolf by asking nicely,” said Innes.

  “Did you try? Politeness isn’t always your strength, Innes.”

  Molly said, “We did ask nicely, when we saw her torturing a couple of boys with beetles. But she threw glass daggers at us. Polite isn’t going to work.”

  “We need to weaken her,” said Theo. “She has lots of excess energy, built up over those years when Nan was controlling her, which she’s now pouring into those curses. If we can make her weaker, she’ll need the extra energy for herself, so she’ll have to remove it from the curses.”

  “How do we do that?” asked Atacama.

  “I don’t know. No Keeper has ever deliberately sent their arc off balance before.”

  “Can’t we ask your family?” said Molly. “It’s their job to keep the helix of magic balanced, so can’t they fix the curse arc?”

  “They’re all busy at the moment, dealing with… with the effects of my last attempt to control my overgrown powers.”

  “Where are they?”

  “In the Pacific. I sank an uninhabited island and set off a few volcanoes. They’re all there trying to undo the damage. That’s why I’ve been sent here to do obscure research in an empty library.”

  “I thought you wanted to be near us,” said Innes.

  Theo smiled at him. “That too. But mainly it’s to keep me out of the way. So, we could ask my family to help, but we’d have to wait a month for them to finish what they’re doing and return home.”

  “If we wait that long,” said Snib, “Molly will have been eaten, and most of my brothers and sisters will have bulked up like bodybuilders, then dropped down dead. There must be something we can do ourselves.”

  “You can mind your own business.” Beth’s voice fell on them from above. “Our interference last October caused this problem. If we hadn’t saved the baby Estelle from the flames, she wouldn’t be messing about with Molly’s curse now. Just like the circling snake warned us, the helix has twisted the other way. We should stop interfering, before we make things even worse.”

  Molly lay down and looked up at Beth, sitting on a slim branch that wasn’t bending under her weight. “Are you even really here?” asked Molly. “Or are you in the trees’ world?”

  “I’m always in the trees’ world, now,” said Beth. “Just like Innes should stay with his rivers, Atacama should stand by his door and that crow-girl should get back to Stone Egg Wood. Each of us should stay in our natural place.”

  “What should I do?” asked Molly. “Crouch in a field, wait for a predator and tak
e my ‘natural place’ in its belly? I can’t do that. And I can’t forget those two boys coughing up beetles and jewels either. I’m going to stop Estelle. Theo, tell me where her strength comes from.”

  “Estelle, like all Keepers, draws her power from the Earth’s elements, the fundamental particles that make up all matter on this planet: gold, iron, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen… I get my power from the life-force of the landscape around me. She gets her power from the life-force of the whole planet. So any weapon made of the Earth’s elements will just make her stronger.”

  “See. It’s impossible,” said Beth. “You should all go home.”

  Suddenly, Theo grinned. “It’s not impossible! All we need is an element that isn’t from Earth. A substance that isn’t part of her strength. I’ve heard of this, once. The Keeper of the Transformation Arc was given cosmic dust as a gift and was ill for years, like he had magical flu. If we bring Estelle into direct contact with something that isn’t made of her own elements, it will weaken her.”

  “You’re sure about that?” asked Molly.

  Theo thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. I’m sure.”

  “Do we have to build a rocket?” asked Atacama.

  “No. Objects fall from space all the time. We just need to find a meteorite.”

  “Star iron,” said Innes.

  “What?”

  “Star iron. I’ve seen a lump of it. I went on a school trip to that musty old stately home in the hills, Ballindreich. They have a cabinet of curiosities that contains a lump of star iron. My teacher said it landed in the Arctic centuries ago and the local tribes worshipped it, then an explorer claimed it in the name of Empire and brought it back to his fancy house. It’s on a shelf, in a wee room, at the top of a tower, just over the moors from here.”

  “And you want to steal it?” asked Beth.

  “If you’re not coming, you can’t criticise.”

  Molly said, “No, it’s a fair point. You really think we should steal it?”

  “It’s already stolen property. Lord What’s-His-Face stole it from an Inuit tribe a couple of hundred years ago. We could use it to save the world, then post it back to the Arctic.”