I held my breath as Sookie took the pen and with her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth, labored with her tidiest letters. No one noticed that the page she signed was from her own notebook that Gnawer had glued on top of the actual book page. When he turned away from the witches, he carefully slipped the fake page out before slamming the book shut.
“Our newest and most powerful witch has signed the book of our coven, and has dedicated herself to maleficium – dark magic.” They began cackling and it grew louder.
Ms. Grimmaar lifted the bell and said in a voice that seemed to suck any warmth from the air, “Bell, book, and candle, we ring in the witch.”
She shook it, and amidst all the cackling, no one noticed that the taped bell didn’t ring. Instead Gnawer rang the reindeer collar that he hid behind his back.
Right, I thought, if Sookie hasn’t really signed the book, and the candle didn’t light by troll magic, and the bell didn’t ring – she’s not a witch.
Then it all went wrong.
Ms. Grimmaar stared suspiciously at the bell and then past the witch circle into the trees. Jasper, Clive, and I stepped back into the shadows. Suddenly Anne Britt swept open her cape and produced a pewter chalice that looked like a goblet the Vikings had used. Inside the goblet swirled a frothing, bubbling green witch’s brew. I’d forgotten about the last part of the ritual, where the new witch drank from the cup.
“No!” I broke from the trees as Jasper and Clive tried to grab me back. “Sookie, don’t drink it!”
CHAPTER 27 - Escape from Blakulla
I GRABBED AT the pewter cup to yank it from Sookie’s hand, but before I could, a claw dug cruelly into my shoulder. Pain shrieked down my arm and back. Ms. Grimmaar wrenched my arms behind me and I couldn’t move.
“Sookie, throw down the cup!” I cried.
But Sookie looked as though she was staring into a completely different place; her glazed eyes passed over me as if I wasn’t there. She lifted the cup to her lips, opened her mouth, and began to drink the green brew.
I lifted my leg and aimed as if I was going to kick a soccer ball out of mid-air. My foot connected with the goblet, and it flew out of Sookie’s hands. As it spun around in the sky, the frothing potion spilled out, phosphorescent droplets flying into the air. Where they landed the grass glowed in the dark.
A steel vice kept squeezing my shoulder until it brought me to my knees with a gasp. In a haze of agony, I could hear Clive and Jasper pushing and shoving their way to us. Suddenly, Ms. Grimmaar let out a shriek.
“Back away,” she cried as if she was also in terrible pain. “This child wears silver, and it burns.”
Ms. Grimmaar had leaned over to grasp my fairy feather and must have brushed against my silver belt. She held out her hand, which showed a horrible burn. Seizing the second of freedom, I jumped up and grabbed Sookie’s arm.
“Come with us.” I tried yanking my sister away, but it was as if she weighed a thousand pounds. Then I remembered what Aunt Hildegaard had said: Sookie had to choose. I couldn’t force her to come with us; her magic was too strong.
Jasper and Clive leaped forward before the witches could surge in and they poured salt in a circle around us. This kept the angry witches at bay.
“Sookie, the witches are going to hurt a lot of people,” I pleaded as they shrieked at us like a crazed chorus of maniacs.
“They’re teaching them a lesson,” Sookie said, and her voice drifted as if she were only half there. “The children were bad to witches before.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but they were doing what they were told. Besides, they have been gone for centuries, Sookie. The kids the witches want to hurt now haven’t done anything to them.”
“The town needs a lesson,” Sookie said in that distant voice.
“So you really intend to drown them?” This didn’t sound like something my sister was capable of.
“No … scare them,” Sookie said brokenly, and for the first time I thought I saw a flash of consciousness when her eyes began blinking. “We’re going to scare them by making waves get big in the channel. The waves will pour onto the shore and extinguish the bonfires. Then they’ll
all run away and their fun night will get wrecked.”
“What if they don’t get away in time?” I pleaded.
Sookie shook her head slowly. “I … I …”
“And think of the reindeer,” I pointed out as my mind raced. “Aunt Hildegaard’s reindeer pen is at the lakeshore. If a big wave comes, Rudolph will be trapped.”
“No …” whispered Sookie as her face crumpled in dismay. My sister began backing away from the witches’ circle. Ms. Grimmaar and the others shrieked in anger, and it was as if steel daggers sliced my heart.
“Hurry,” I gasped.
We stretched out my silver chain between us, and Jasper and Clive walked along the middle, pouring a trail of salt from their pockets. We hurried to the funicular as the forest seemed to turn against us. Wind whipped up in a fierce frenzy, tearing branches from the trees. Brooms of evergreen flew everywhere, one smashing down and poking me near the eye.
“Ow!” A branch of pine smacked Clive in the head. Jasper ducked just in time as an uprooted birch tree dived down from the sky and stuck in the ground like a pitchfork.
“The witches are using the elements of earth, air, and fire against us,” said Sookie as the ground began to shake. A flaming branch streaked across the sky and landed next to us on a tree, which burst into flame.
Our friends waited by the funicular. They’d made a clear path for us lined with salt, and we raced the last several feet. Mitch had already tampered with the battered electrical box and the grind of gears was in full hum. The four of us leaped inside the crowded gondola and Mitch swung back the lever, putting the funicular in full power as we raced down the mountain.
Faster and faster we hurtled down Blakulla’s steep and treacherous slope. My stomach flipped as if I was careening along in a rollercoaster.
“Maybe you better hit the brakes,” Amarjeet gasped as she clutched onto a leather strap. We were all holding on for our lives.
“I … can’t,” Mitch shouted as he pulled a side lever on the car. He kept yanking but the funicular didn’t slow down.
CHAPTER 28 - Sámi Magic
THE BOTTOM OF the mountain raced toward us. Would we fly off the cable and spin to our deaths, or would the car crash at the bottom of the mountain and crush us all?
The funicular plummeted. I clutched onto Sookie, and we all crouched on the floor to save ourselves from flying around. Then in rapid motion the funicular lurched forward, pulled back, lurched again, and stopped. For a second, darkness spun in front of my eyes as my head slammed against the side of the car.
“We … we’ve stopped,” gasped Mia.
We were all lying in a dog pile at the bottom of the funicular. As I scrambled up I could see a three-fingered hand clutching the side of the cable car, and a long, hairy gray arm holding it back. Actually, a lot of arms were holding onto the funicular. I moved to the window. A dozen trolls had surged under the speeding car and raced along, jumping onto it, slowing it down, and then at the very last minute, dragging it to a stop. I promised myself to give the trolls every last drop of cream on the farm.
“We’ve got to hurry,” Sookie urged. “I think we made the witches very mad.”
The trolls fled back into the forest, so it seemed they were nothing but shadows and tricks of our imagination.
“What was that?” Amarjeet gasped.
The sky blazed brown and then sickly green as a skull white fog rolled down Blakulla’s mountain slope. Its foul stench sickened our stomachs.
“Hurry,” said Jasper. “Let’s get to the boats.”
We scrambled across the rocky shore and waded into ice water up to our knees. I hesitated for a second as uneasiness seeped into me. The thought of bobbing along a deep canal in a rickety row boat made my heart hammer.
“What is it, Cat?” Sookie frowned
, looking worried herself.
“Nothing,” I said. Maybe I’d just had enough water for one day. I jumped into the rowboat and hauled Sookie in after me. We dug in our oars and began to row.
As we moved away from the shore, a strange whooshing grew into an earsplitting roar as the white fog twisted itself into a full-fledged tornado.
“Pull in your oars and hold on,” screamed Mia as the tornado descended upon us.
The calm waters quickly turned into shooting white water rapids, and our boats rocked, bounced, and spun. I pushed Sookie into the bottom of our boat and lay on top of her as I clung to the sides. It was all we could do to keep ourselves from being tossed out into the boiling water. But we were all strong athletes, and we hung on even when the boats arced and stood straight up in the water before slamming back down and tipping us from side to side.
All of a sudden the fog lifted and the boats stopped dead in the water. Then it grew ominously quiet. “I don’t like this,” whispered Sookie, her eyes darting back and forth as she stared past the blackness to the distant shore.
“Watch out for the water, Cat,” my sister said in an eerie voice. Once more a chilling sense of déjà vu swept over me.
“What?” Dread clutched my heart.
A creepy sucking sound echoed across the canal, and our boat dipped as if someone had pulled the plug and the water was swirling down the drain.
“Oh my god.” The softness in Amanda’s voice made her words more chilling than a scream. We looked behind as an enormous tidal wave grew in the distance. As it roared closer, it collected height. In seconds, the wave was as tall as a five-storey building and heading straight toward us. So the witches had stolen enough of Sookie’s magic to carry out their wicked plan. We were all going to drown.
“Turn the boats!” Mia shouted. “Steer into the wave.”
We pulled frantically at the oars and turned our boats around as the towering wave swept us up. But we all knew we were doomed.
“We need to fight back with magic,” Sookie shouted. She scrunched her face and began murmuring. But her song was hardly a hum. “I’m not strong enough,” she moaned. “Too much of my magic is with Ms. Grimmaar. I have to get it back so I can reverse the water spell.”
“How?” I shouted against the roaring wave.
“By making a stronger spell than hers,” Sookie wailed.
We only had seconds.
They say when you are about to die your life flashes before your eyes. But the only flash I got was my last happy moment at Gröna Lund before the shaman had wrecked the night. She’d been right; first I’d drown, then worse would happen. My friends and sister would drown with me, and so would lots of innocent people.
Ugly cold fear began darkening my mind until a shard of hot anger broke through.
The shaman had said the fates were against me, but she’d also said to fight them. Only I could decide my own fate. And whatever happened, I was going down kicking. My mind spun as I tried to think of any way to fight against the witches.
The shaman said I had to use my magic. And she’d given me a knotted rope that she had said bound the elements of nature. Okay, my mind raced, those are earth, air, fire … and water. I dug into my jacket pocket and pulled the knotted rope. I still didn’t see what magic …
Then I felt my skin tingle, like I was standing too close to a Halloween sparker. Osgaard’s magic! Troll magic still burned inside my lungs. “Hold on to us!” I shouted to Clive, Amanda, Jasper, and Zach. They anchored us with their arms and legs as I grabbed Sookie’s hands in mine.
It was as if lightning shot through us. I swear my hair stood on end. Sookie began singing one of her creepy songs, and this time her voice carried over the storm and the roar of the tidal wave. Still the wave grew, and our row boat lifted higher, about to be tossed down like a little toy falling from a giant’s hand.
I clutched the cord the shaman had thrust in my hand. Use this against the forces of nature. What I had to do suddenly made sense. “We have to untie the knots of nature,” I yelled to Sookie. “That will undo the spells the witches have cast.”
With one hand still clasped in Sookie’s, I untied a knot in the rope with my free hand. The roar damped as the wind died down. We untied another knot. The wave didn’t crest; instead, the water began streaming in the other direction when the earth shook beneath the water. We untied a third knot, and the wave flattened, setting both the row boats on the churning water that circled like a giant drain. Then the boats settled.
We should have all been cheering and slapping high fives and slamming each other on the back. But no one said a thing as we dipped our oars into the waves and rowed back to shore.
CHAPTER 29 - An Uncertain Future
THE BONFIRES STILL burned on the beaches, and the songs of Walpurgis Night rang through the air. After we pulled the boats into the rental shop and locked them up, Swedish students greeted us with cheers and offered us hot drinks spiced with cinnamon and fruit. My friends and I sat on a log and stared blankly at the roaring flames. The hot drinks helped to stop us from shaking.
Because the fires had been around a bend and out of eyeshot of the swelling wave, no one else knew the danger they’d been in. We were bone weary and our muscles screamed. My guess was that all of us would sleep deeply tonight. And most of us would forget … at least if Blakulla’s magic was anything like Grim Hill’s.
“What about the witches?” worried Amarjeet. “Are they going to cause us more grief?” She gazed warily at Blakulla, its spiked shape a menacing reminder of our close call.
“You don’t have to worry about them for a while,” Clive smiled wickedly.
“What did you do?” Jasper looked at him and then at me.
“We’ve done nothing,” I said innocently. We hadn’t.
Then to clear it up, Clive said, “Let’s just say that right now the witches have their hands full managing a swarm of angry trolls.”
Sookie stood on the shore, and I left the comfortable warmth of the bonfire to join her.
“I wanted to be a witch,” Sookie turned to me, her eyes on the verge of tears. “It’s no fun keeping magic to myself. The witches would let me use all the magic I wanted.”
“To do bad things,” I reminded her.
Sookie sniffed and wiped her coat sleeve across her nose. “Good things too …”
I stared at her.
“Well,” she snuffled, “fun things, at least.”
I worried that I’d only delayed the day my sister would become a witch. I now understood that leaving Grim Hill wouldn’t save us from magic – nothing would. Our family curse made sure of that. One of us would fight magic, and the other would join the magical realm. That was our fate. But we’d already fought the fates tonight and won. What would our future be?
“Cat, Sookie,” Aunt Hildegaard rushed toward us. She was joined by the elderly man we’d met in the café and several other adults their age. “We couldn’t rally the young people on the beaches to leave. Then I came back and couldn’t find you.”
Aunt Hildegaard fiercely hugged the both of us. I was surprised, even though I now understood she’d been trying to protect Sookie since we’d arrived. After all, she’d thought I was the witch.
*
That night after we’d split up and my friends went back to the hotel, and Sookie was bundled in her bed, I sat down at the pine table in my aunt’s kitchen. She’d heated me milk, and I sipped it from the cup. It seemed that nothing, not even the heavy sweater she’d loaned me or the thick quilt across my lap, could keep me warm.
A soft knock rapped on the door. Aunt Hildegaard left the table and cracked open the door as a chill swept into the kitchen. It was Osgaard. I leaped from the table, took the pot of milk on the stove, and went to pour it into his battered cup.
“Your aunt already paid us,” said Osgaard. “I’m only here to report the trolls will not work any longer with the witches. The witches lost their new magic when they lost the little girl and won’t b
e bothering the town.”
“Consider it a bonus,” I said with gratitude, ladling the warm milk into his cup. The trolls had saved my life twice and had taken care of the witches. Okay, some of them had wanted to eat me, but they’d come through in the end.
As Osgaard disappeared into the night, I called after him. “Thank you for everything, Night Roamer.”
After I shut the door I asked my aunt, “If the witches’ magic didn’t last, will my troll magic disappear?”
“I don’t know,” said Aunt Hildegaard. “I can’t say I’ve ever met anyone who was resuscitated by a troll before.”
“What about Sookie?” I couldn’t help worry. “Gnawer tricked the witches and didn’t ring the bell or light the candle by magic. And Sookie didn’t really sign the book. But …”
“What?” A shadow crossed my aunt’s face.
“Sookie drank some of the witches’ brew. That can’t be good.”
“No, I’m sure it isn’t. But again, I’ve never met someone who managed to defy the witches and lived to tell the tale.” My aunt’s voice didn’t hold back on admiration and her eyes glinted – but only for a moment. “This is new territory for me, and I’m afraid I can’t see the future.”
“Can anyone?” I remembered how Sookie seemed to see things ahead of time. Also, my own nightmare about falling from the bridge had come true.
My aunt’s expression grew uneasy. “Otherworld time stretches out and snaps back as if you are constantly hitting fast-forward and rewind. Sometimes you see shadows of things that may come …” My aunt didn’t finish. She frowned before she said, “I think you could use a good night’s sleep. I’m certain everything will seem much brighter tomorrow.”
*
Aunt Hildegaard had been right. While I wasn’t as lucky as most of my friends, who woke up exhausted, thinking they had been to some wild party on Walpurgis Night, the whole night did seem far away and long ago. And Sookie seemed happy hanging out on the farm and playing with the reindeer and other farm animals. For the rest of the trip, my aunt took me into town each day to be with my friends.
Grim Hill: The Family Secret Page 13