The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle

by Janet Fox

  “Here, now,” came the voice of the giant. “Just where do you think you’re going, and what are you bairns up to?”

  “We have to free them,” Kat pleaded.

  Hugo wasn’t having any of it. He’d marched them straight back to the kitchen and stood barring the door, arms folded over his chest, glowering at them, lighting an old oil lamp that hung inside the door. He had taken Peter’s sword and Kat’s scissors; they lay on the table at his back.

  “Look,” said Peter. “We’re not the enemy. We want to cut the spell.”

  “You have weapons,” Hugo said. “I’m no’ the sharpest tool in the shed, but I don’t like weapons.”

  “But it’s so we can save them, not hurt them,” Kat said, begging.

  “And how do you know about this, hey? How do I know the Lady hasn’t spelled you and made you do her bidding?” Hugo’s eyes were bright points. Then he softened a little, and said to Kat, “Is your hand all right, then?”

  “My hand?” said Kat, startled. “How do you know about my hand?”

  “I was the one what took you to the magister so’s he could fix it.”

  “You! Magister?”

  “I didna have a choice,” Hugo said miserably. “Your real hand was crushed. I did what I had to.”

  The memory rushed back to Kat, flooding her with images of her crushed hand, of the magister, and of Hugo, as if his words had opened a door.

  “Hugo,” Kat said softly, “we’re on the same side. And I thank you for my hand, even if . . .” She couldn’t finish. The thought crossed her mind that she might yet have to pay for this magic.

  “We’re running out of time,” Peter murmured.

  A sudden sound like a squeaky hinge, that made the hair on the back of Kat’s neck stand right up, rose from beside the great fireplace.

  They turned as one. A small door creaked open, and a very small head emerged from the opening, a head with straw-rough hair and a longish nose, followed by a rounded shoulder with a lopsided hump.

  Kat sucked in air. The crippled boy.

  She was sure he would run back to wherever he’d come from the instant he saw them, but the kitchen was still dimly lit, and he seemed so intent on what he was doing that he didn’t know they were there.

  Then, from somewhere below and behind him, came a most welcome voice, calling out.

  “See if you can find Hugo. Try to concentrate, now, dearie. Oh, I know it’s a hard thing, but it’s the only thing. You must try to shake off that dreadful stupor and concentrate. Or I shall be doomed to end my days like this, helpless as a snail without a shell. Oh, please, dearie . . .”

  “Cook!” Kat called in a coarse whisper.

  The boy lurched, hearing Kat’s voice; the giant lurched, hearing Cook’s voice; Peter lurched out of sheer shock; and Kat lurched, hoping to wedge something to keep that door open before the boy tumbled back inside.

  She made it, shoving a long fireplace poker into the gap just as the boy tugged at the door. When he saw it was stuck open, he made a gurgling sound in his throat and disappeared back into the darkness.

  “What? What?” came Cook. “Oh, no, it ain’t her, is it? Oh, I must be about to meet my maker . . .”

  “No, Cook, it’s me! Kat Bateson. And Peter Williams. And even Hugo is here.” Kat slipped into the opening and stood at the top of a steep stair to a cellar, which she could see by the light of a number of candles all lit in magnificent gleaming silver candelabra.

  Lying at the bottom, in a painful-looking heap, was Cook.

  Kat rushed down the stairs. The boy vanished into the shadows at the far side of the cellar.

  “Oh, thank my lucky stars. I thought I was done for. This poor boy, he can’t do a thing. I’d only just got him to go up and try to find Hugo, because all he can do is shine and polish and light the candles and stare into the gloss . . .”

  “What happened?” Peter asked, now by Kat’s side.

  “She pushed me,” said Cook sourly. “Caught me unawares and pushed me right down the stairs. She’s a nasty piece of work, and a witch; this is sure because of that terrible charming she’s done and the way she’s spelled this poor lad and the others, too, which I’ve only just come to realize is what’s been going on, and poor Gregor—”

  “Hugo, can you get her upstairs?” Kat said.

  Hugo lifted Cook from the floor like she was no bigger than a very small sack of potatoes, when she was, in fact, much closer to a very large number of them put together. He had her up the stairs and sitting in the chair by the fire in a heartbeat, where she sagged and gripped her right leg.

  “Think it might be broke. Think something is broke, at any rate. Or at least crushed. Or sprained maybe. Or spelled. It don’t matter, I couldn’t get up, I was helpless as a babe, lying there worrying over you children and Gregor and Hugo . . . Have you seen Lord Craig?” And she gripped Kat’s arm.

  “We’ve seen him,” she said, “and he asked after you. Wanted you to be found as soon as possible.”

  A little smile crossed Cook’s lips. When she smiled she was pretty. Kat realized she was probably younger than she’d thought before, too.

  “But we’ve got no time now, Cook, for anything but the other children,” Kat said. “We’ve stopped her for now, but I fear she’ll make an escape, and then be after us all. Please help us convince Hugo to let us see the others.”

  “What’s this? Stopped her?” Cook looked from Kat to Peter and then to Hugo. “And you didn’t believe them?”

  “I feared it were a ruse, miss,” said Hugo. “I feared they were spellbound by the Lady . . .”

  As if the mention of her name caused a change, that terrible sound, that grinding, grating sound, came from the hall where they’d left the Lady and rose to a tortured scream, and they froze, exchanging horrified looks.

  60

  The Second Unmaking: Dog, Cat, Bell, Devil’s Sign, Fish, Hunchback

  “SHE’S COMING,” KAT said. “We must be quick about it now.”

  “We have to find that boy,” Peter said, pointing to the cellar.

  The noise from the hall grew, and with it whining and the movement of gears and a scrape-hish-scrape; Kat knew the Lady was free of the pen now, and moving. “No time. She’ll trap us down there.” She turned to Hugo. “Where are the others?”

  “Most in the barn,” he said.

  “Well?” said Cook, eyeing Hugo. “Get on with it then! Leave me be, here. Just hand me that fry pan. No, the biggest one. Yes, I can handle it, thank you. There. Now I’m armed. The leg is better already, see?” And she flexed it.

  Kat snatched up the scissors as she and Peter scampered after Hugo, out the door and across the courtyard, Hugo striding one step to each of their four. He shoved open the barn door and made for the stalls.

  Low lamps illuminated the barn. In the second stall a spotted hound lifted her head, her litter curled within her legs, and a ball of a boy that Kat recognized as Colin slept next to her, curled into himself as tight as one of the puppies.

  She leaned over him. There was the chain around his neck, with a terrier charm attached. The chain itself glowed a dull blue. She had to be careful not to touch it, now that she knew the consequences. She spoke the incantation and slipped the scissors slowly around the chain.

  The scissors melted the chain like butter.

  “Ach, lassie,” whispered Hugo, as Colin’s eyes fluttered open.

  At the same time, they heard it coming from the house, through the open kitchen and barn doors: a dreadful scream.

  Kat and Peter exchanged a look; they were both thinking about Cook, though the scream didn’t sound like hers. But there was no time to lose now. Kat pressed the dog charm into her pocket with the others, as Peter said, “Colin? You all right?”

  Colin nodded. “I had the most terrible dream . . .”

 
“Where are the other children?” Kat asked Hugo, who scratched his head and regarded the golden-glowing scissors with new respect.

  “This way,” Hugo said.

  They climbed a ladder to the loft. Four figures huddled against a wall. One of them Kat knew right off: Isabelle. The other girl she recognized as the poor freezing little thing she’d seen by the pond. And there were two boys, Jorry and the boy Kat had seen fleeing the kitchen with the cats around his feet.

  This boy seemed sharper than the others. Maybe the charm hadn’t affected him so deeply, or maybe he had an innate desire to protect the other children, but he pushed himself between Kat and the others as if to say, Keep off.

  “Now, laddie,” said Hugo, pleading, “this lass is here to help.”

  The boy shook his head slowly and spread his arms wide. Kat knelt. “Listen, I have to take that chain off you. And off them, too.”

  The boy looked terrified at that prospect and clutched at the chain, desperate to keep it on.

  “I bet you tried to take one off, right?” Kat said. “I bet you found out that was a bad idea. But see, I have these magic scissors . . .”

  Hearing the words come from her mouth made her wonder. She had magic scissors. These children were charmed. The Lady of the castle was a cruel witch. And Kat was able to use magic to free them all.

  “Hurry,” said Peter, his voice an urgent whisper.

  “Please,” Kat said.

  The boy didn’t budge.

  Something rubbed at her ankle, and she almost jumped out of her skin, but it was a cat, rubbing its cheek contentedly on her heel. “Oh, kitty,” Kat said, relieved, reaching down to rub its ears.

  At which everything about the boy changed. He looked from her to the cat and back. The cat purred so loud, Kat could almost feel the vibration. He dropped his arms and bent his head as if to say, All right.

  Kat didn’t hesitate; she cut that chain straightaway, using the spell, and the cat charm clattered to the wood floor.

  He leapt to his feet. “Where is she? She can’t have them, no. I won’t let her have them.”

  Kat said, “You’re very noble, but I must cut these charms from them now or she will have them.”

  But as she got to work, snipping one chain after another, there came more noise from the house, and then she realized that Peter and Hugo were both gone. She feared the worst but had to press on, and dropped the boy’s cat, Isabelle’s bell, Jorry’s evil hand sign, and then the small girl’s fish charm into her pocket.

  Seven charms, including her own; she needed to find five more children. And among them, Amelie and Rob. Where were they?

  Kat didn’t have to ask John—for that was the cat-boy’s name—to help the other children when she left them. He was already comforting Isabelle. Kat slid down the ladder as quick as she could and ran for the barn door.

  Dreadful noises came from the house. She bolted to the kitchen to find Cook still wielding her pan and Hugo and Peter looking stunned; the noises came from the hall, not far from the kitchen.

  It sounded like a great clanking machine falling to pieces.

  “What . . . ?” Kat began.

  “We saw her in the moonlight. She’s falling apart,” said Peter in amazement. “Scattering wheels and gears and I-don’t-know-what-all, spread across the floor. With each charm it seems another piece of her falls off.”

  “It’s working!” Kat said, excited. “But where are the others? I’m missing five, by my count, including Amelie and Rob.”

  “There’s the boy in the cellar,” Peter said.

  “Right.”

  “I don’t know about the other two,” Peter went on. “They might be the singing girls.”

  Kat went for the cellar first.

  The poor crippled boy was clearly used to hiding. Used to being chased and used to making himself nearly invisible. He scuttled from one dark corner to the next, and Kat couldn’t get near him.

  After several minutes—an eternity, as Kat heard the noises from above—she sat down in the middle of a heap of silver spoons and candlesticks, platters and teapots, and picked up a polishing rag.

  At once the boy drew closer. She took the rag and made slow circles on her scissors, turning them this way and that, pretending to see her own reflection in the small, sharp blades.

  The boy inched his way toward her, as if she held something so irresistible that he couldn’t help himself. And then he was next to her, venturing to reach toward the scissors.

  She handed him the polishing rag, and then a silver plate, and he bent his head and she slid the scissors around the chain and spoke the charm and, like the others, the chain vanished in a puff of smoke.

  The cry came at the same instant and now from almost directly above, and she heard shouts from Cook, Hugo, and Peter. And then a sound that was worse than anything: the sound of silence.

  61

  Scattered Pieces

  IT IS MUCH worse for the Lady than when the magister had taken her true limbs. This is an anguishing pain, a deep ripping and tearing. With each broken charm, a part of the Lady Eleanor rattles to pieces, the very part she had given in exchange for the soul she now loses from her thirteenth charm, and her power diminishes, and she screams for it.

  Wheels grate on wheels and she has to crawl like a damaged bug.

  Oh, what she will do to those children! What she will do once she has been restored and has secured the magister’s help . . . and the Lady screams again at the thought that she will once more be at the mercy of the magister, need his help, be helpless . . . the very thing she vowed she would never be again.

  What is left of the Lady Eleanor half crawls, half crab-walks across the floor, heading for the stairs.

  There they wait for her—the pearl and the eel. She will see to it that their sister, that wicked Katherine, will suffer over their loss.

  The Lady is not done yet.

  62

  The Third Unmaking: Boot and Chest

  THE CRIPPLED BOY put his finger to his lips, then pointed toward the far wall. He moved and Kat followed.

  She had to give him credit for being tricky and clever and finding all the hidden passageways in this castle. He led her through a maze of tunnels and secret doorways until they emerged right below the covered parapet outside the keep.

  He pointed at the keep itself.

  “What?” Kat whispered.

  “Angels,” he whispered back. “Up in the heavens.”

  The voices. Angels. Of course. At least two more children were up there, and from what the boy said, they were at the very top of the tower. But in the deepest dark, in that strange tower with its sudden gaps and steep stone steps and hidden doorways, she feared she’d tumble to her death. The moon was about to set, and the night would become black as pitch. And the peculiar keep—would it be possessed of the evil of All Hallows’ Eve?

  Yet she had no choice but to find her way to the top. She took a step toward it when the boy clutched her sleeve.

  “Keep left. Only left. Any doors, any openings, take the left.” Then he disappeared, retreating into the shadows as if he was a shadow himself. Kat couldn’t blame him; she wished she, too, could disappear.

  Keep calm. Keep left.

  She found the door at the bottom of the keep from the courtyard and pushed it open with a soft creak. She stepped inside and turned left—and ran straight into a stone wall.

  She was flummoxed. How could she turn left into a wall with the opening leading right?

  She did the only thing she could think of, the thing she’d done each time she’d run into this obstacle: she pushed.

  The wall gave way into utter black. Kat might as well have been blind. Until she remembered.

  She pulled the chatelaine from her pocket with her right hand and held it up, and at once it glowed with a blue light so that she c
ould find her way forward, a softer light than when they were on the moors, and she guessed that was because it was missing the pen. She climbed up and up cold stone stairs, pressing her hands on the wall to her left, always left. Once or twice her hand brushed sticky cobwebs and she snatched her fingers away, rubbing them hard on her woolen pants and moving quickly, hoping that spiders weren’t crawling into her hair or up her back. Several times as she climbed the wall gave way to another opening and she had to hold out her chatelaine to be sure there wasn’t some deep well at her feet, but the boy proved right. Keep left. Keep calm.

  Moaning and groaning noises rose from deep within the keep.

  A blast of cold air from above caused Kat’s jaw to tighten, and then she was out in the open. The night was well on, the moon had set, and the stars lay thick and glinting across the sky. It was frigid, but the wind was stopped by the parapet wall, thank heavens, because by the light of her chatelaine she saw them, huddled right up against that wall, in the deepest shadows.

  Now she heard them, too, humming softly together, making the most beautiful wordless music, a song so sad and sweet that it made Kat think of home before the war, and Mum and Father together as before, and Rob and Ame snug and safe, and a warm fire and Kat sleepy and her stomach full and her heart full, too.

  She began to hum the familiar tune.

  They were huddled together, two girls, twins. They smiled at her, maybe because she sang with them, and they didn’t seem the least fearful. When she cut their chains they hesitated only a moment before breaking into song again, this time with a glance at each other and putting words to the old hymn, for that’s what it was.

  Kat wondered whether they had taken comfort from each other and that was what made them less fearful than the other charmed children, or whether they took comfort from their music, or both.

  The girls followed her down the tower. They had to move slowly for fear of the steep stairs, and by the time they reached the bottom and stepped into the court the sky was lighter, a pale gray, and dawn not far off.