The Witching Elm (A Memento Mori Witch Novel, Book 1)

by C. N. Crawford

  They stood and began clearing out the room, starting with the rug. When the tapestry and wooden table were removed to the stairwell, they sat in a circle on the cold stone floor. Tobias handed out pencils and paper and asked them to phonetically transcribe the fire spell, copying the sounds over and over.

  “I hate handwriting,” Alan muttered after a while.

  Tobias looked up from the book. “This is the first step. If we’re going to actually fight with the spells, we must memorize them. We can’t refer to a book if somebody’s trying to kill us.”

  They continued copying the sequence until Fiona’s hand shot up. “Done! I’ve got it memorized.”

  She ran her hands over the chilly stone floor as the others worked, tracing words with her fingers to pass the time. Then she reclined against the wall with a loud sigh. “Can we try it out now? Maybe everyone else can practice at home.”

  Celia straightened, narrowing her eyes. “Show-off.”

  “All right,” said Tobias. “Has everyone got the fire blankets and goggles ready? I’m not sure how big the inferno will be. I think everyone except Fiona and me should go toward the door. Mariana—you have the fire destroyer, right?”

  “The fire extinguisher. Yes.”

  As the others moved toward the stairwell, Fiona joined Tobias near the fireplace. She wrapped herself in the silvery fire blanket.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Tobias asked. “We could try it outside, near water at least.”

  “But this room will shield us from the aura.” Fiona secured her goggles. “We’ll be fine with the blankets.”

  “All right. Go on, then.”

  Fiona chanted the spell. Her muscles tensed, ready to spring backward when the room erupted into a fireball. As she recited the Angelic words, the aura fluttered across her skin like moth wings. She could picture the stone walls growing so hot in the inferno that they melted. As she finished the recitation, she braced herself for an explosion.

  There was nothing for a moment. As she held her breath, she could hear only the sound of her thudding heart. Then, a tiny lick of fire emerged in the fireplace, the size of a flame on a birthday cake’s candle. She waited, but the little, faltering flame remained the same size.

  “Is that it?” Alan called out, pulling up his goggles.

  “Was my pronunciation wrong?” said Fiona.

  Tobias shook his head. “It sounded right to me. I don’t know what happened. Let me try.”

  They returned to their positions, goggles in place, and Tobias repeated the spell. Fiona braced herself again, but once more only a tiny spark of flame emerged, dwarfed by empty space in the fireplace. In one last attempt, they joined in a circle and chanted the spell together. This time, the flame quadrupled in size.

  “I guess the spells are stronger if we work as a group,” said Tobias. “But it’s hardly an inferno.”

  Mariana pulled off her goggles. “Who was Queen Boudicca? She sucks.”

  “She didn’t suck,” said Alan. “She burned the whole city of London down when it was controlled by the Romans. She must’ve had something better than this spell.”

  Mariana rolled her eyes. “Like matches.”

  “So what do we do now?” said Alan.

  “We might as well keep practicing.” Fiona unwrapped the silvery blanket. They hadn’t created an inferno, but she was pleased to have created anything using just words. “Maybe some of the other spells will be more effective.”

  “What, like Viscomtess Dangerosa’s Torn Bodice?” Tobias tossed down his goggles. “I don’t know what sort of person would even use that spell.”

  Fiona averted her eyes. “At least it would be a way to start to learn Angelic.”

  “Why don’t we try the séance again in here?” said Alan, folding up his fire blanket. “Together we might be able to raise Ann Hibbins.”

  They agreed to try the séance one more time, joining in a circle. Celia led the chants again, and they held hands under the flickering candles of the Mather Adepti refuge.

  “Ann Hibbins—speak to us and move among us!” Celia chanted. She turned her head up toward the ceiling. “Ann Hibbins!”

  Nothing rippled over Fiona’s skin, and the sound of Celia repeating herself began to annoy her. After a few minutes, she opened her eyes to catch the tower imp peaking out from a small hole below the window. “Guys, I don’t think it’s working. We’ve got nothing to fight the Harvesters right now.”

  24

  Fiona

  On Saturday morning, the day she’d arranged to meet Jack, Fiona woke in her usual tangle of bed sheets. She slipped into Celia’s jeans, green sweater, and gold ballet slippers. The only thing she wore of her own was a silver pendant containing an old photo of her grandmother.

  After spending all her free time in the musty old building, she found the fresh spring air a relief. Boston winters were brutal, but when life began to bleed back into the earth, it smelled glorious. Under the dappled light of the Common trees, Fiona forgot about the Harvesters. As she entered the cemetery, she spotted Jack crouching before a gravestone, drawing in a notebook.

  He rose as he saw her approach, gazing at her from beneath his dark eyelashes. “There you are!”

  “Hi, Jack.” She glanced at the illuminated tree leaves above her as she stood by his side. “It’s a beautiful day.” She took a deep breath.

  “It is. Have you been here before?”

  “We came here when we were reading The Scarlet Letter. I remember there was a grave with a fancy A on it, like the A in the book.” It was a relief to have something factual to talk about.

  “You mean Elizabeth Pain. She’s buried right over there.” He pointed to a gravestone to the right. “She was arrested right after the Salem Witch Trials. They said she killed her baby.”

  They strolled toward the grave, and his arm brushed against hers.

  She bit her lip. It was hard not to ask him about his famous relatives. “When we read The Scarlet Letter, they told us Nathaniel Hawthorne was a descendant of one of the witch trial judges. So that means you’re related to the judge, too.”

  “Oh. That.” He brushed his black curls back with a faint smile. “Not one of the high points in our family history.”

  “Kind of cool, though, in a creepy way.”

  They stopped, crouching in front of Elizabeth’s grave. The stone featured a stark image of a winged skull. Above the death’s-head stood an hourglass with angel wings. Two pillars on the sides were marked with leaves and corn, and what appeared to be drooping pairs of breasts. In the corner, the ornate letter A decorated a stately shield along with two lions.

  “That’s the one,” she said. “I remember thinking the carvings on the side looked like, you know, like boobs.” Boobs—what an awkward word. But her tongue always tripped over the S’s in breasts, and she couldn’t very well say tits.

  Jack laughed, throwing back his head. “They are boobs, but they’re supposed to represent the spiritual nourishment provided by ministers.”

  She smiled, staring into his pale blue eyes. His cheeks were beautifully flushed today. “You seem like you know a lot about cemeteries.”

  He held out his hand as he rose. “I just like history, and there’s not much left from the past here except the gravestones. Plus, they’re good for drawing.”

  She grasped his hand, standing. “What have you been working on?”

  He showed her a sketch. It was a beautifully rendered image of a skull-and-hourglass engraving—chilling and delicate at the same time. “They were Puritan favorites. At funerals, they’d give out gloves or flasks decorated with skulls and hourglasses.”

  “Like goth party favors?”

  “Pretty much. Skulls and skeletons were really the only pictures anyone saw. Besides the boobs. Fugit hora; memento mori.”

  She glanced at the hourglass on the stone. “Time flies; remember death.”

  He smiled. “Right. Your mother’s the Latin teacher. What’s it like having a p
arent at the school?”

  They began walking in the shade of the trees.

  “It’s okay. Sometimes people complain to me about their grades. But she gets the summers off, and we stay at my aunt’s house in Nantucket. Last summer Mariana visited the island from New York, and we rode bikes the whole time. Also, with my mom in the school, I get to hear some of the teacher gossip.”

  “Does your mom know what happened to Ms. Bouchard?” He linked his arm into hers as they walked the winding path.

  “That one’s a mystery. I think she might have just run off.” She looked toward the street. “There are a lot of strange things going on.”

  “Teachers disappearing, the elm tree reappearing—those sorts of strange things?” He sighed. “And now Munroe has been talking about witches.”

  “Has she? Do people believe her?”

  “She’s very convincing. She says your friend Tobias is a witch.”

  Fiona was surprised that Jack had been paying enough attention to know who her friends were. “Boys can’t be witches.” It was the best she could come up with. “But it does feel like something… dangerous is coming, doesn’t it?”

  He glanced at her. “Like we’re all going to die?”

  “I hope not quite that bad.” She frowned. “But you know if anything bad happens, just stay in the school. Or come find me.” She turned, touching his arm with her free hand.

  He grinned. “Really? Will you protect me?”

  She gazed at him solemnly. “I would do my best.”

  “I feel safer already from whatever monsters might be after us.”

  “You should feel safer. My mom used to sweep the monsters out from under my bed before I went to sleep. I learned her technique, so I’m perfectly capable of sweeping the monsters away from you.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Does that work for real monsters? Or only imagined ones?”

  She nodded. “I believe it’s a fool-proof, all-purpose monster remedy.”

  His face became serious. “Well, you must come over before I go to sleep and sweep the monsters out.”

  Her heart raced when she thought about going to his room.

  He glanced at his watch. “Damn, I have to go already. I have some reading to do. Will you be around next weekend?”

  “Yeah. Assuming the monsters haven’t gotten us first.” She smiled.

  25

  Tobias

  Tobias rolled over in his bed. Someone was shaking his arm.

  “I’m sleeping,” he mumbled into his pillow. He pulled the blankets up around him.

  “Tobias, wake up.” It was Alan’s voice.

  Tobias rolled over, opening his eyes to find his roommate standing over him. Moonlight streamed through their window.

  “Something’s happening outside.”

  Tobias sat up, rubbing his eyes. A ragged, high-pitched noise wound through the streets outside.

  Alan darted to the window. “Did you hear that? It sounded like someone screaming. But it didn’t sound like the usual college drunks.”

  Tobias threw off his blankets and followed Alan to the window. He pressed his hand on the cool glass as he looked out toward the park. A group of young people ran out of the Common and across Boylston Street. One of the women was screaming, “Oh my God!”

  Tobias’s breath caught in his lungs. They watched as two more people fled the park.

  Alan turned to him. “Should we call the police?”

  As he spoke the words, police sirens howled in the distance, and red and blue lights flashed near Park Street. Two large, tan-colored armored vehicles rolled down Boylston and cut left into the park. A flat voice announced through a loudspeaker, “Please disperse. This is a crime scene. Please disperse for your own safety.”

  As Tobias watched the pulsing police lights, he heard only the wail of sirens, until the school intercom crackled in the hallway. “Hello?” It was Mulligan. “Is this on? I don’t know how to…” There was a shuffling noise. “Students, please stay in your rooms. This is a lockdown procedure. Please lock your doors and remain in your rooms with the lights off. This is not a drill.”

  A droning sound throbbed overhead—a rapid-fire beating of the air. A large white circle of light danced around in the streets.

  “Helicopters,” Alan murmured, staring out the window. The light swerved into the Common and back to Boylston. “They’re searching for someone.”

  A burgundy hat flashed through the searchlight in front of the school gates and disappeared again.

  “It’s the Redcap.” Tobias felt sick. He’d brought him here.

  The white circle hovered on the pavement near where the Redcap had been, and after a few seconds, a severed head rolled into the light. It was a man with close-cropped black hair. Alan jumped back from the window and covered his mouth, muttering something into his hand. Tobias could hardly breathe.

  “Was that a policeman?” Alan asked, just as the Redcap darted into the searchlight again. Grinning, he took the gore-streaked cap off his head and dipped it into the policeman’s puddled blood before disappearing into the dark again.

  A short burst of automatic gunfire drew the light further into the park, illuminating a large oak tree at the border of the Common. A group of men in tapered hats stood beneath it, pulling on a rope. A writhing body bathed in white light rose above them.

  Tobias’s stomach dropped. “It’s the Harvesters.” He stepped away from the window. “They’re here.”

  26

  Fiona

  Fiona leaned against a yew tree in the courtyard beside Jack, toying with the locket around her neck. Across the street, the sunset filtered through the trees in the Common, flecking the ground with sparks of light. The bodies had been cut down, but a thick red smear marred the pavement in front of the school, and armored police vehicles still rumbled through the streets. The police had erected temporary metal fences around the park, and yellow tape zigzagged between them.

  Fourteen people had been hanged, two beheaded, and six shot—possibly by friendly fire.

  “Were you awake when it happened?” asked Jack.

  “Mulligan’s announcement woke us. Celia and I had to lean out the window to see what was happening. I saw the head.” She took a shuddering breath. As much as they’d talked about Harvesters and demons, she’d never seen the slackened jaw of a corpse before, or the rapid exsanguination of a severed jugular. She swallowed. “And then the guy was jerking around when they hung him. And they could have come into the school.”

  “If Grunshaw hadn’t been enforcing the lockdown, I would’ve found you.” He stuck his hands in his pockets, turning to look at her. His eyes looked almost green in the golden light. “Or at least I could have swept the monsters away for you.”

  “I never really got any sleep, even after the Har—” She stopped herself. “Even after the terrorists disappeared. My mom was on the phone with me forever. It feels like after the marathon bombings, except I didn’t see those up close.” She shivered. “Everyone stayed up to watch the news, waiting to see if the police would catch the guys. But they never did.”

  “What does everyone think happened?” He rested his arm on the tree.

  “Munroe says it was witchcraft because the terrorists disappeared so quickly. And because there’s a tiny tree growing in the spot where the elm once stood. I saw a picture. It doesn’t look like it’s made of bark. It looks like bone.”

  He frowned, running his fingers through his hair. “Witchcraft accusations don’t seem like they belong in this century, but the events don’t seem natural.”

  Fiona took another shaky breath. The lack of sleep had a dulling effect on her senses, making her calmer than she would have been otherwise. “Munroe keeps saying her father’s on a witchcraft task force. Everyone seems to believe her.” She turned to him. “Were your parents worried?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t imagine so.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t hear much from them.”

&
nbsp; “Why? Where do they live?”

  “They’re from Salem originally. Home of the witch trials.”

  She shuddered. “I don’t understand how people in Salem used to watch public hangings for entertainment.”

  “Maybe in the old days, it felt like a sacrifice to a destructive god. Maybe people thought better her than me. Anyway, you don’t need to be scared.” He pulled at a ringlet next to her cheek. “If anything else happens, I promise to keep you safe, even if I have to throw Grunshaw out the window. And maybe you need a break from staring at the hanging tree. There’s more to being from Salem than just witches. I could take you sailing, so you could forget about all this.”

  “Sailing sounds nice.” She blinked, gazing into his eyes. She was only half awake.

  He twirled her ringlet around his index finger. “Next weekend—we’ll go out into the harbor.”

  As she looked up at him, he leaned down to kiss her on the mouth. She felt her whole body light up with euphoria. And then he was off again strolling back toward the school building. She was dizzy with excitement for a moment, until the red stain on the pavement called her back to reality.

  She turned, heading back into the main entrance and climbing the creaky stairs. After stopping by her room for a pillow and blankets, she dragged them to the library. She unlatched the memorial plaque, sneaking into the Adepti room. The silence of the hidden room would provide some respite after her sleepless night.

  She threw her bedding down and pulled off her locket, hanging it from one of the sconce’s long fingers. Still in her clothes, she snuggled into her pillow against the wall.

  * * *

  When she awoke, the room was dark except for a bluish glow from the window. She sat up and looked around, rubbing her eyes. She was starting to like the idea of staying here. None of the teachers were on the lookout for students spending too much time in the library, so she could come and go unnoticed. She rose, stretching her arms over her head. Maybe she could make the tower imp her friend, the way prisoners befriended rats.