The Blood Binding

by Helen Stringer

  “I can’t go,” she whispered. “I can’t go anywhere.”

  “Why not?” asked Belladonna.

  “And what’s with the whispering?” asked Steve.

  “If I whisper they stay away,” she said. “Can’t you see them? They’re all around!”

  Steve looked at Belladonna. She nodded and closed her eyes, feeling the strength of the Words as they came to her lips. But this time they weren’t quite so strange, this time they were Words she had used before.

  “Igi si gar,” she said, then again, louder. “Igi si gar!!”

  Reveal yourself!

  “Oh, sh…criminy!!!” Steve staggered back, falling over the railroad ties and landing in the gravel.

  Belladonna opened her eyes. He was staring at something, and from the angle of his gaze, it was something very big.

  And it was behind her.

  She turned around slowly. It wasn’t an “it,” it was a them: huge swirling, morphing black clouds, like giant murmurations of starlings. Belladonna stared. They were almost beautiful, but the waves of menace that pulsed across the parade ground and parking lot prevented them from being anything other than terrifying.

  “Steve…”

  “I know! I know!” Steve scrambled to his feet and pulled out the ruler, but instead of turning into something useful, he found himself holding something he’d never seen before. “What’s that?” he said, staring at it.

  “It’s a pair of secateurs,” said Belladonna, glancing sideways but unwilling to take her eyes off the swirling black clouds.

  “A pair of what??”

  “Secateurs,” repeated Belladonna. “They’re used for gardening. My mum had some.”

  “Gardening???”

  “What are they?” asked Belladonna.

  “Spirits of the Black Water,” said Branwyn. “They destroy crops, spread disease, bring death to animals and men. We had to keep them here.”

  “Here?”

  “Here where the black water is. Our Seers would bind them to the peat marsh. That’s why I cannot leave, even if I wanted to.”

  “Wait…” Steve glanced at Branwyn, unwilling to take his attention away from the swirling masses of whatever-it-was that surrounded them. “They used you? You’re the one who is keeping them here?”

  “Blood binds strongest.”

  “But…you’re dead,” said Steve. “You don’t have any blood. Your body isn’t even here, it’s over there in the museum.”

  “I think you might be being too literal,” said Belladonna.

  “I don’t know what that means,” said Branwyn.

  “It means, it’s not actual blood, is it? It’s the kind where…you know, when people describe someone as a ‘blood relative.’ It just means they’re related.”

  “Yes,” Branwyn said, smiling. “That’s it. But it couldn’t be him, could it? He was too important. I didn’t matter. I was a girl and I had a limp. No one would ever take me to wife. It was all explained.”

  “By who?” said Steve.

  “Whom,” said Belladonna.

  “Whatever. It was the Seer, wasn’t it? Was he your father?”

  “No. My father died of the ague. My uncle had been bound here before, but it turned out my grandmother yielded to temptation and he was not of the blood.”

  “Good for granny,” muttered Steve.

  “So the Seer was your grandfather?”

  “My great-uncle. They said he was the greatest seer that had ever been. Only he knew how to bind the Spirits of the Black Water.”

  “I bet he did,” said Steve, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “But there must be something we can--”

  “There isn’t,” said Branwyn. “This is how things must be. But thank you for spending some time with me. And thank you very much for removing the band. I feel much better now.”

  “But…” began Belladonna.

  Steve took her arm and pulled her away. The secateurs returned to the shape of the ruler and the shifting Spirits became more faint.

  “We have to do something,” said Belladonna, wrenching her arm free. “We can’t just leave her like this!”

  “I know,” said Steve. “But we’re not going to figure it out here, are we? We need to find out more. Find out exactly what those things are.”

  Belladonna wanted him to be wrong, wanted some Words to come, but she knew that they wouldn’t. This was something else, something as old as the Earth, something even older than the Queen of the Abyss.

  “We’ll be back,” she yelled. “Branwyn, we’ll help you, I promise.”

  Branwyn turned, smiled and waved, watching as they walked before returning to her lonely vigil, keeping the Spirits of the Black Water bound and idly picking pieces of peat from her red hair.

  The back of the bus was as noisy as ever on the trip back to school, but Belladonna couldn’t help noticing that, for once, Steve wasn’t at the epicenter of things. He was sitting next to the window on the back seat, lost in thought.

  The short October days meant that it was nearly dark by the time they got back, and the streets around the school were clogged with the cars of parents unwilling to let their kids find their own ways home through the gloomy streets. The ones who did have to walk left quickly, while there was still a faint glimmer of day. The rain had stopped, though, so things weren’t quite as dreary as they might have been.

  Steve took a back way and met Belladonna a couple of blocks away from the school. Ever since the incident with the Proctors and the standing stones, Miss Parker had insisted that, as Paladin, it was part of his job to make sure the Spellbinder got home safely. He had agreed, but wasn’t prepared to go so far as to let anyone see him doing it.

  On most days he would jump out of the bushes and try to scare her, but today he just fell into step beside her as they made their way to Lychgate Lane. Belladonna glanced at him through the dark curtains of her lank hair. There was something unsettling in his silence.

  “What is it?” she said, finally.

  Steve shrugged and they walked on in silence until the black spire of St. Abelard’s came into view.

  “It’s just…” he said, suddenly. “She’s…I mean, she was about our age, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “What would it have been like?”

  “To die like that, you mean?”

  “Yes. No. Sort of.” He stopped and looked over at the silhouettes of the gravestones in the cemetery. “Everyone goes eventually. Even kids. We could get sick or have an accident…”

  “Or get beheaded by a huge faceless demon.”

  “Yeah,” said Steve, remembering the Allu and smiling. “That too. But it’s not the same as someone from your own family walking up to you and telling you that they’re going to take you into some swamp and strangle you, is it?”

  “No. And telling her that she’d been chosen not because she was special, but because she was worthless.”

  “D’you think they did it in the dark?”

  Belladonna shuddered.

  “Don’t think about it,” she said. “It’s too awful. We’ll go and see Miss Parker in the morning.”

  “Okay.”

  They walked on up the street until the lights of 65 Lychgate Lane could be clearly seen.

  “See you tomorrow then,” said Steve.

  “’Bye,” said Belladonna.

  But he was already gone, running down the street and around the corner. Belladonna walked up the path and opened the door.

  “I’m home!” she shouted.

  “We’re in the kitchen!”

  It was Grandma Johnson’s voice. That meant frozen food for dinner again.

  Belladonna dumped her bag by the door and hung her anorak on its hook before dawdling into the kitchen.

  “Hey, kiddo!” said her dad, cheery as ever. “How were the Roman ruins?”

  “Wet. Where’s mum?”

  “She’s busy, Belladonna. Come on, sit down and get those wet shoes
off.”

  A chair moved itself out from the table and Belladonna sat down and leaned over to take off her shoes. Which was when she noticed the glance that her dad and Grandma Johnson exchanged. She sat up and looked at them, suddenly worried.

  “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “Nothing,” said Grandma Johnson, softly. “Everything’s fine. She’s just busy.”

  She turned to her dad.

  “Really,” he said. “D’you think I’d be here if she wasn’t alright?”

  “Yes, but--”

  “She’s not your Aunt Deirdre,” said Grandma Johnson, almost reading her thoughts. “She hasn’t gone off on some wild goose chase. She’s on the Other Side…busy.”

  Belladonna felt somewhat reassured, but she still didn’t like the situation, and she liked it even less when, after dinner, her dad dematerialized before the credits of “Staunchly Springs” had even finished.

  “Don’t you have any homework?” asked Grandma Johnson.

  “Yes.”

  “Well then.”

  Belladonna went out to the hall, grabbed her bag and stomped up the stairs to her room. She whizzed through the math homework without her usual care, then skimmed the chapter of “Silas Marner” they were supposed to read for English. She usually liked English, but “Silas Marner” was without doubt the most boring book on the face of the planet.

  She grabbed a stack of books about mythology through the ages and went back downstairs. The school secretary, Mrs. Jay, had given a set each to her and Steve with instructions to memorize everything. It had been interesting at first, but after a while all the creatures, gods, goddesses and demons had started to sort of meld together and she’d stopped reading them.

  She was still a little annoyed about no one telling her what was going on with her mum, but when she got downstairs the living room fire was on and Grandma Johnson had made hot chocolate and brought out some little cakes. Belladonna sat on the floor near the fire and felt bad about the stomping. She sipped her hot chocolate and began leafing through the books.

  Now she wished she’d stuck at it longer when she’d first been given them. There were four books, and each was about four inches thick—it was like hunting for a needle in a haystack. No…worse…it was like looking for a particular needle in a stack of needles. She turned the pages of each and then checked the indexes.

  “What are you looking for, dear?”

  “Spirits of the Black Water,” said Belladonna.

  She told her grandmother about Branwyn and the strange, malevolent clouds.

  “And that’s what she called them? Spirits of the Black Water?”

  “Yes, but they’re not mentioned in any of these books and Mrs. Jay said she’d never heard of them either.”

  “Well, don’t worry dear, I’m sure Miss Parker will know what to do. Now drink your chocolate milk, it’s time for that alien autopsy show.”

  “You know that UFO stuff is all rubbish, right Grandma? It’s not real.”

  “Yes, well that’s what most people say about ghosts, isn’t it? Have another cake and change the telly to channel five.”

  The next morning the rain was back and even with all the lights on, the classrooms at Dulworth’s seemed cloaked in gloom. French seemed to drag on forever, with Madame Huggins going on and on about irregular verbs, which appeared to be nearly all of them, as far as Belladonna could make out. Then came geography with Mr. Kettlewick. They were doing North America, but Belladonna couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying because he kept pronouncing the Appalachians as Appa-latch-ianze, when she’d seen a documentary just last week and knew it was supposed to be Appa-laysh-anz.

  When break finally rolled around, she met Steve at the foot of the stairs that led to the science labs and Miss Parker’s office. They practically ran to her door and pressed the buzzer.

  “I never thought I’d actually want to come and see old Parker,” said Steve.

  “Sh!” said Belladonna. “She’ll hear you!”

  Silence. No red busy light, no yellow wait light and no green enter light.

  “She was in assembly,” said Belladonna. “She has to be here.”

  She pressed the buzzer again. Silence.

  Steve turned the door handle.

  “Steve! You can’t do that!”

  He smiled, pushed the door open a crack and stuck his head inside.

  “Rats and earwigs!”

  “What?”

  “Look,” he said, flinging the door wide.

  Belladonna glanced around the landing, nervously, making sure no one was watching, then cautiously stepped into the office.

  Her heart sank. It wasn’t just that Miss Parker wasn’t there—the lacrosse stick she kept mounted on the wall was missing too. The stick became her staff when she was the Queen of the Abyss, the ruler of the Land of the Dead, and the fact that it was not in its frame could mean only one thing.

  “Oh, no! She’s on the Other Side!”

  “We could ask Mrs. Jay,” suggested Steve. “She gave us all those mythology books, after all.”

  “What do you think you are doing?” boomed an all-too-familiar voice behind them. “And ask me what?”

  “I’m sorry,” stammered Steve. “We were…that is…”

  “We wanted to ask Miss Parker about the Spirits of the Black Waters.”

  “About the what?”

  Mrs. Jay hustled them back into Miss Parker’s office and closed the door.

  “Explain,” she snapped.

  Steve told her about Branwyn and the huge black shifting clouds.

  Mrs. Jay listened carefully, thought for a moment, then shook her head.

  “Never heard of them.”

  “Then where--” began Belladonna.

  Mrs. Jay silenced her with a shake of her head.

  “You can’t help every ghost that’s in trouble,” she said. “That’s not why you’re here. There are always going to be unfortunate situations. You are here to prevent the Empress of the Dark Spaces returning. You should be learning the skills that you will need on that dark day and finding the nomials that will form the Multiversal Orrery. These spirits, or whatever they are, have already been bound. They pose no danger. Now get back downstairs, break is nearly over.”

  She pushed them out of the office, closed the door and then locked it.

  “But we can’t just--”

  “Yes, you can. Now go!”

  They walked down the stairs slowly and were met by a familiar figure waiting near the hot drinks machine.

  “What-ho, chums!” said Elsie, cheerily.

  “Oh, great,” muttered Steve.

  “Where have you been?” asked Belladonna. “We haven’t seen you for ages.”

  “Oh, everyone’s getting ready for the parties,” said Elsie, her perfect chestnut curls, bouncing with excitement.

  “What parties?”

  “Halloween, of course,” said Elsie, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s tomorrow!”

  “And the ghosts have parties?”

  “Yes. Lots of them.”

  “Since when?” asked Steve, skeptically.

  “Since always,” said Elsie. “Well, not last year, obviously. All that Dr. Ashe stuff put rather a damper on things. Speaking of dampers, why so glum?”

  Belladonna told the story of Branwyn yet again, finishing just as the bell sounded for the end of break and the halls suddenly filled with students on their way to classes.

  “Hm,” said Elsie, thoughtfully. “I’ll see what I can find out. Library later?”

  “Yes,” said Steve. “Lunchtime.”

  Elsie nodded and vanished.

  “See you later,” muttered Steve, strolling away and disappearing into the crowd.

  Belladonna sighed and made her way to the other end of the school and double chemistry. The rest of the morning stretched on endlessly, and even the fact that Steve still managed to make his solution go “bang!” when it was just supposed to t
urn purple didn’t really help matters much. Mr. Morris didn’t even send him to see Miss Parker, he just made a slight huffing noise and moved on to Sophie Warren, whose solution was just the right color…of course.

  “I almost wouldn’t mind her constantly picking on me if she could just get a “D” in something once in while,” complained Belladonna when they reached the solitude of the small, almost entirely useless library.

  “I think I need to expand my repertoire,” said Steve. “Move on from loud noises. Smells, maybe.”

  “Don’t,” said Belladonna, wrinkling her nose. “It’d get in everyone’s hair and clothes.”

  Steve grinned in a way that was always worrying to anyone that knew him.

  “Hey,” he said. “I think I might have figured out why no one’s heard of the Spirits of the Black Water.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I was looking at my book about the bog people…”

  “When?”

  “In the back of chemistry. Double lessons are so boring. So I was reading the book and it said that nobody knows much about the culture of the bog people because they don’t seem to have had a system of writing.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” said Belladonna, hoping that Steve couldn’t see how impressed she was. “I saw a documentary about druids and stuff and it said they passed everything down by word of mouth.”

  “Right, which would explain why no one’s heard of their gods or their demons. Once the last member of the tribe, or whatever, died out, it was gone forever.”

  “Except it isn’t,” said Elsie, materializing near the classics, and looking more than usually pleased with herself.

  “It isn’t?” said Belladonna.

  Elsie glanced to her left and looked vaguely annoyed.

  “Come on,” she said, a little impatiently, to what appeared to be nothing. “It’ll be fine. They’re nice, I promise.”

  They stared at the space next to Elsie and slowly, slowly, a dark form began to take shape. From Elsie’s tone of voice, Belladonna had been expecting it to be a child, but it was a grown man, small and muscular and very nervous.

  “It’s the first time he’s been back in over two thousand years,” explained Elsie. “He doesn’t have very good memories of the place.”