Willow Witch

by Patty Jansen

  They found Loesie on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

  She looked up when Johanna and Nellie came in.

  “We’re going to help you today,” Nellie said in a voice that sounded too cheerful.

  Loesie gave Johanna a hard and cool stare. “What are we doing here?” That same question again. How many times had she asked it already?

  “We’re going into the forest,” Johanna said. “Let’s get you dressed.”

  Loesie just repeated, “What are we doing here?”

  Johanna shivered. Somehow, she preferred Loesie unable to talk but with some of her wits.

  Loesie’s old black dress was definitely beyond wearing outside, so they dressed her in one of the duke’s dresses. Nellie had put the bread on a little table next to the hearth, which Loesie ate while Nellie tried to bring some order to her hair.

  Loesie sat like a doll while Nellie yanked at the knots. “You’re going to have to cut some of these out. This is just terrible.”

  Where previously Loesie would have gotten angry, because she didn’t like anyone commenting on what she looked like, she only repeated, “What are we doing here?”

  Nellie managed to get Loesie’s hair into some sort of bun, and then they helped Loesie down the stairs. It was as if every time Johanna touched Loesie, she seemed more fragile.

  This thing is killing her, like having wasting sickness.

  In the hall, the duke was still talking to Roald about his family. Roald let his gaze wander over the walls and ceiling, but Johanna had no doubt that he heard—and would remember—everything the duke said.

  “Ah, there you are. Karl has brought the wagon. Come with me.”

  He started for the door, but Johanna held Nellie back.

  “You don’t have to watch this, Nellie. You’re probably better off waiting here. It could get really nasty.”

  Nellie didn’t protest.

  “I will go with you,” Roald said.

  “Stay here with Nellie,” Johanna said. Whatever was going to happen in that forest was not going be pleasant.

  Roald didn’t protest either. The two of them looked forlorn in that huge and empty hall.

  An open wagon with a single horse stood in front of the steps. The stablehand Karl came up the steps and helped Loesie into the back seat. He offered her a cloak, but she didn’t want it.

  Johanna gladly took the offered cloak. The sun might be out, but the air was crisp. Next, Karl helped the duke into the wagon. He settled on the bench next to her, with a blanket over his legs and clutching the walking stick between his knees.

  Johanna turned around to check on Loesie. In the space between the seats stood a crate covered with a dark red cloth and the cage made of rusty iron.

  Karl jumped into the driver’s seat. With a flick of the reins, they were off, along the gravel drive and the tree-lined path. This was why the network of lanes was so extensive: so that the duke could go for rides.

  They rode out into the forest to the far side of the castle. A fine haze still hung between the trees and over the water of the lake. A swan glided gracefully over the water, barely stirring the surface with a ripple.

  Oak trees grew on the sides of the lake, big ones with twisted and knotted trunks. The field between the trees was a riot of buttercups, daisies, dandelions, wild carrot and soft purple flowers on slender stems.

  The horse trotted at a brisk pace, so she guessed that their destination couldn’t be too far away, but it was hard to judge distance in this undulating country.

  They went over a hill and into the forest. Pale sunlight made the fresh leaves on the trees look bright green, although a haze still lingered between the trees. Johanna looked for signs, but saw no traces of magic.

  Loesie sat in the back of the wagon, observing the countryside. Her face was pale and drawn, the skin on her bone-thin arms grey and ghost-like. She had given up asking what they were doing here and Johanna was glad about that. She couldn’t imagine how frightening it must be to have something else possess your soul and drown out your own thoughts. Then a disturbing thought: Loesie was meant to survive this exorcism, wasn’t she?

  The horses followed a path that ran along a creek that fed the lake. The watercourse meandered between trees, through thickets and marshy bogs. The water was so clear that you could see the white sand at the bottom.

  They came to a field with a farmhouse. The orchard bloomed on the far side of the house. Cows grazed in the meadow. It was all so peaceful that it was hard to believe that there were major veins of magic nearby.

  Then up another hill between huge gnarled oak trees with thick and knobbly trunks. Several trees were hollow and had lost large branches over the years, leaving gaping maws of darkness where Johanna could almost see pairs of eyes staring back at her.

  “These trees are older than the estate itself,” the duke said. “They are hundreds of years old.”

  Johanna believed it, too. In the back of her mind rose the soft whisper of voices. The very forest was alive with magic. A breeze brought a chill wind that made Johanna shiver.

  “The tree line passes here,” the duke said. “This is why those trees get so old. The line goes from here, through the field over there to the other side of the hill.” He pointed with his walking stick.

  “Do all trees have memories? In Saarland, it’s just the willow trees and willow wood.”

  “That’s because they grow close to the water, and that water comes from here. Magic spreads all over the world.”

  “Does all magic come from around here? Everything seems to have magic.”

  “No, magic is a far eastern thing. You may think that this countryside is alive with magic, but we have few strong magicians. In the far east, everyone is a strong magician.”

  Johanna thought of the tales told by seafaring traders of the evils that lay around the horn. “But the stories of sea creatures are fables, certainly?”

  “I don’t know about sea creatures, that’s the domain of the sailors, but I do know of some people who attempted to go to the east overland. I don’t know the names of the creatures the easterners have, but they are made of pure magic. If they want ill—and why not, because who can stop them?—they can overrun the entire world and reduce us to slaves. We do not want that to happen, right?”

  Johanna thought back to the ball on the night of the fire. Father’s colleague Master Deim had been saying similar things.

  Everyone was saying it: If the people from the far east came . . .

  Well, if they did, they would find this region’s main port in a big mess, ruled by a puppet from a church that taught that magic didn’t exist.

  The wagon crested the hill and entered an area where five tree-lined lanes joined. Between the straight and slender beech trunks, Johanna had a view over a green meadow which sloped down on the other side. Karl pulled the reins and the horse slowed.

  Johanna looked around. “Is this the place?”

  A cold breeze blew in from the opposite direction, and it contained a prick of magic. Wailing voices that cried of misery and death.

  She shivered despite the nice weather.

  The five-point intersection looked an extremely unlikely location for a magical junction.

  “No, not here, but most of us will have to continue on foot. We need to go down there.” The duke pointed at the meadow.

  A network of dark hedges ran through undulating grassy land, all joining at a hillock in the centre. No, they were not hedges. She followed the closest of them uphill, where it branched off a lane that joined the intersection. They were paths hidden under living tunnels of branches. Trees forced by magic to grow in tunnel shape to hide the path underneath. All these tunnels met up in a larger, dome-sh
aped junction, also formed out of tortured trees.

  Johanna shivered. Who treated trees like this? She wanted to run to the trees and free them if she knew how.

  At the mouth of the tunnel waited a man on a horse, his face shaded inside the hood of his cloak.

  “You came,” the duke said.

  The man lowered the hood. It was Sylvan, his scarred face humourless. “Did you ever think I wouldn’t?”

  “I can never be sure with you.”

  Karl brought the wagon to a complete halt. He got down from the driver’s seat and helped the duke down, and then Johanna. Sylvan also dismounted.

  Karl took care of Sylvan’s horse.

  Loesie in the wagon couldn’t walk and now Johanna understood why he had chosen such a simple wagon. A bigger one would not have fitted through this tunnel.

  Sylvan took the horse by the reins and led the way into the tunnel.

  ‎

  Chapter 13

  * * *

  AS SOON AS Johanna set foot on the path, voices whispered with the wind, the words lilting and mysterious. The leaves rustled as if reaching for her. They were bursting with stories. They were in pain. They struggled against their magic-enforced shape. They wailed Set us free, set us free.

  The chill that took hold of her went to her bones.

  The duke, walking behind the wagon, concentrated on where he put his feet and his walking stick on the uneven ground. Both he and Loesie in the cart showed no signs of being affected; neither did Sylvan.

  Johanna had to restrain herself from running away. She had to get out of here. Something bad was going to happen.

  But the duke kept walking slowly, with his cane going tap, tap, tap on the uneven ground. Once the path had been paved, but the baked clay bricks had crumbled so that the surface was uneven and pitted with holes. He tapped the ground with his walking stick, as if seeking out safe places to put his feet.

  His breath came quite heavy and at times he had to stop for a while.

  “I ask my son to come here, usually,” he said during one such stop. “He can do most things that need to be done regularly.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “Setting wards and renewing protections. Seriously, girl, what do they teach you in that so-called enlightened town of yours? Does no one protect the town or even their property with wards? You have the gift. Are you going to tell me that all of your life, you have never done anything with it?”

  “The church forbids magic.”

  “The church forbids dark magic. There is a big difference.”

  “In Saarland any magic is dark. Also, isn’t that what we’re coming out here for? Exorcism? Isn’t that dark magic?”

  “Yes. Dark magic has touched your friend. There is no way to undo dark magic other than with dark magic. In fact, the term dark magic is a poorly-chosen one. It simply means magic that requires active involvement. Not all of it is dark, or bad. The darkness is not in the magic, it is in the user.”

  A gust of wind made the branches whistle in high-pitched voices. It was as if someone screamed a warning. Get away from him! He’ll turn you into a toad!

  “Nooo!” Johanna clamped her hands over her ears.

  Set us free, set us free, set us free.

  Sylvan said something to his father which Johanna didn’t hear. Neither of them laughed, as the bandits would have done.

  She didn’t know what to think anymore. One the one hand, she wanted to trust this man. On the other hand . . . she and Loesie were at his mercy. If he wanted ill, there would be no stopping him.

  They had come to the top of the hillock in the middle of the web of tree tunnels. Seven tunnels met each other here in a space that could best be described as a cathedral of trees.

  In the middle was a circle of stone paving with, in the middle, a stone altar. It was an old-looking thing, made from ancient stone. The top bore carvings, but age had worn away at the stone, so it was hard to see what the image depicted.

  “This is where the magic lines meet.” The duke smiled. “The water line runs from here to there.” He pointed. “The earth line runs across the meadow. The wood line runs down the path we’ve just come on. I trust you’ve heard voices or felt magic?”

  Johanna nodded. The whispering voices in the back of her head would not go away.

  “My grandfather had this planted. My wife and I were married here.”

  The voices screamed in her ears, the words no longer audible. The chill of the wind took her breath away.

  But the sun was still shining and the leaves on the trees didn’t move visibly. The horse showed no signs of being disturbed by magic, and horses were normally very skittish. Loesie was also not more disturbed than usual. Was it just her?

  Sylvan stopped the cart. The duke took the reins while Sylvan helped Loesie down from the wagon. He picked her up in his arms and set her on top of the stone table, then he lifted the cage and crate out of the wagon and put them on the ground.

  He took the reins from his father and led the horse away. The wind carried the sound of the horse’s footsteps on the eroded brick paving.

  “Well, we may start,” the duke said, breaking the tense silence.

  He uncovered the crate and unloaded a number of items. A tall, long-necked bottle, half-filled with a dark, sloshing fluid. A gold-encrusted goblet. A sheep’s skull. Johanna remembered the face of the Reverend Romulus. You want an exorcist, he had said. Well, she had found one, and now that he was about to start, she wondered if this was such a good idea. Actually, she was sure it wasn’t such a good idea, because even Sylvan admitted that his father didn’t always get it right.

  But it was too late for all of that now.

  The duke unstoppered the bottle and poured some of the fluid into the goblet. Then he slowly walked around the stone table, pouring drops of it on the ground until he had emptied the goblet. The wind brought a scent of sourness that made the hair on Johanna’s arms stand up. Like vomit.

  The duke met her eyes. “Dark magic is nothing more than us using the magic we have been born with to create more of the same. Your magic is wood, so you should be able to make things grow in whatever fashion you want.”

  “It that what your grandfather did? Force the trees to grow this way?”

  It was a most hideous thing to do. Tree torture.

  “It is up to us to control nature, or else nature will control us.”

  He hobbled back to the cart, leaned his walking stick to it, and produced a box. Inside lay a couple of burning coals. He held a dry stick against the heat and blew. The wood started smoking. He lifted the stick in front of his face. A curl of smoke rose from its tip.

  “I need to warn you. My magic is fire, so you may see some strange phenomena soon.”

  Fire magic. There had been fire demons on the roofs of Saardam on the day the city burned. Kylian had jumped over the fence as soon as he saw those. Had the duke been in the city? He said he rarely travelled except along the tree-lined lanes of his estate. Maybe they weren’t as far from the river as she thought. Maybe he’d come with his half-brother—the one he’d supposedly tried to kill? The situation was getting more confusing all the time.

  The duke turned the burning stick upside down. An orange flame erupted from its burning end, and crept over the length of the wood.

  The duke blew and fanned the flames. Fire licked his fingers, but it didn’t seem to bother him. Sylvan gave him a torch made from a stick with oil-drenched straw. The flames went wooof when he held the burning stick underneath. He swung the torch from side to side to fan the flames, scattering bits of burning straw on his clothes and in his hair. Smoke rose from a patch on the shoulder of his jacket, that was spreading now, with a ring of tiny flam
es.

  Just as Johanna wanted to say something about it, he flung the torch into the air towards the “roof” of the tree cathedral.

  Something made a terrible screeching noise, like an animal about to be killed. Johanna clamped her hands over her ears. “Stop it!”

  The duke held his outstretched hands towards the torch, which hung in mid-air, spewing flames in all directions. He spoke harsh-sounding words in a low voice.

  As the torch fell, the flames detached themselves from the wood end and shaped themselves into some kind of creature that moved of its own accord. It grew a long bushy tail, an elongate body and four short legs, and a rounded snout with two pointy ears with tufts of fire-hair at the top.

  A squirrel. It hopped through the air, and paused on the duke’s outstretched hand to look around. The tail twitched, leaking bits of fire. Then it ran down his arm, setting fire to his jacket in its wake. It ran across the ground, leaving a trail of singed grass, to the trunk of one of the imprisoned trees.

  There was that horrible screech again and now she understood what it was: the wood’s fear of this creature. Johanna shivered. A gust of wind tore between the trees, making the branches whistle.

  The squirrel stopped, sat on its hind legs and sniffed the air.

  The duke called a few words in that harsh, magical language and the creature ran back to the stone table. It sniffed the ground where he had poured the wine, following the trail of drops around the table. And around and around.

  Loesie sat up, her eyes wide, more alert than Johanna had seen her. Her gaze followed the fire squirrel around the table, quite alarmed, Johanna thought.

  Why were Loesie’s clothes and the stone around her wet?

  Wait—water dripped from above. From the trees. Loesie’s magic was wood, and the trees were keeping her safe from the fire.