by Lari Don
For Mirren
Thank you for never getting too big for this kind of magic. I will always write these stories for you, even when you’re off having your own adventures
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Extract from ‘The Witch’s Guide to Magical Combat’
Also By Lari Don
Copyright
Chapter One
Molly’s curse got worse early on Sunday morning.
Molly expected to become human as she leapt through the air.
She expected to beat Innes to the finish line as a hare, change shape when she crossed the stone wall into Aunt Doreen’s garden, and crash-land on the ground as a girl.
That’s what always happened.
She always beat her friend Innes when he challenged her to a race. She always controlled her curse by crossing a boundary and becoming human again, just in time to accept his grudging congratulations.
But this time, when she landed on the ground, she didn’t fall and bash her knees. This time she stayed on all four feet. All four paws.
She was over the wall, over the boundary, and she was still a hare. Still small, vulnerable, defenceless. Still unable to speak.
Innes thumped down on his heavy hooves, shapeshifted from white horse to blond boy, then said, “Well done. Again. Though I don’t know how you do it. I was the fastest thing in Speyside until you arrived. You weigh less than one of my hooves, you don’t even train, and you still beat me every single time. It’s not… fair. But, obviously, well done, again.”
Molly couldn’t answer.
Innes sighed. “Why have you shifted back to a hare already? Do you want another race? I will beat you eventually, but I’m not giving it another go until I’ve had one of your great-aunt’s biscuits. So bounce over the wall and become a girl again. You’re easier to chat to when you can talk back.”
Molly turned and jumped over the wall, hoping it had been some kind of magical blip, hoping the rules of her curse would work as usual this time.
She landed in the field neatly and elegantly. She was still a hare.
Over the past week, Molly had got used to being a part-time hare. She enjoyed the speed and the strength of her long hare legs and she loved beating Innes in races. But she didn’t want to be a full-time hare.
She’d learnt to manipulate this curse, with the help of her new friends. She’d discovered that, as well as becoming a hare unwillingly when she heard a dog bark or growl, she could choose to shift from human to hare by growling like a dog herself. She also knew that she always shifted back from hare to human when she crossed the boundary between one owner’s land and the next: a garden wall, a playground fence, a road cutting between two farms. So why wasn’t it working now?
She leapt the wall again, still enjoying the power of her legs and the precision of her senses, but also starting to feel trapped inside this small fragile shape. She landed, on all four paws. She was still a hare.
Molly looked down at her delicate brown paws, wondering if she’d ever see her pale human fingers again.
Innes was frowning. “Why are you still a hare?” He crouched down and placed a hand gently on her back.
With his warm palm on her spine, Molly was suddenly aware of her fast jerky breathing. Stuck inside this hare body, she was beginning to panic.
“Calm down, Molly. We’ll work this out. Maybe this wall is, I don’t know, broken or something. Let’s try other boundaries…”
Innes wrapped his hands round her ribcage, about to pick her up. Molly flicked her ears in annoyance, slid out of his grasp and sprinted across her aunt’s garden. She leapt over the hens’ wire run, hurdled the wooden fence into Mr Buchan’s weeds, then jumped a white wall onto the Websters’ lawn.
She was still a hare.
She swerved round in a tight circle and ran back. Over the wall, over the fence, round the confused chickens, back to Innes.
“So walls don’t work and fences don’t work,” he said, “even though they worked yesterday. We’ll have to change you back another way.” He paused. “I shift by thinking about the shape I want to be. Why don’t you try that?”
Molly’s ears drooped. Innes changed easily because he was a kelpie, a born shapeshifter, able to become human or horse or fish or monster at will. She’d been cursed to change from human to hare, so she had much less control over her shapeshifting.
“I know,” said Innes, “it’s probably not as easy for you. But see if it works.”
Molly closed her wide-vision eyes and pictured herself. Her girl-self. The self she had been every minute of every day until Mr Crottel had cursed her. She saw freckles and fingers. She saw bruised knees, poky elbows and short brown hair. She focused and she wished and she hoped.
And it made no difference at all. She was still a hare.
“This is beyond us,” said Innes. “Let’s ask Mrs Sharpe. She knows a lot more than she taught us on that curse-lifting workshop. If your curse has got worse somehow, she’ll know what to do. Let’s go to Skene Mains farm.”
They walked down the narrow garden, through the back door into the kitchen, then crept through the bright cottage. As Innes opened the front door, Molly heard her Aunt Doreen call from the living room. “I’m off to Elgin soon to get some messages, so I’ll not be back until teatime. See you later, Molly.”
Innes muttered, “Alright. Bye,” and dashed through the front door before Molly’s aunt could identify his voice.
He shut the door and put Molly down on the pavement in front of the row of houses between the distillery and the town.
He asked, “Would you rather go to Skene Mains the long way round town on your own paws, or the short way through town under my coat?”
She pointed her nose at the hills.
He grinned. “Race you?”
She shook her ears.
He sighed. “Ok. I know. On unfamiliar territory you have to be sensible, you have to keep an eye out for predators and snares. No race then; let’s just meet at the farm gates. I bet I’ll get there before you!”
Molly sprinted over the empty road, then into the fields that would take her in a long curve round the town of Craigvenie to Mrs Sharpe’s farm.
As Molly ran at a comfortable speed, looking out for dogs, foxes and barbed wire, she realised Innes was galloping one field higher up, looking for more challenging obstacles to leap.
Each time she pushed under a gate or leapt a wall, she hoped to hit the ground with a human-sized crash. But each time, she was still a hare.
Then she ran into a grassy field and saw a moving shape to her left.
Was it a predator? A fox?
Molly dropped to the ground and lay flat, hiding her soft brown contours in the folds of the field. Then she recognised the shape.
It was a hare. Three hares. Long-legged and l
ong-eared, like larger stronger faster rabbits. Silhouetted clearly on the grass of the field.
Molly had never met any other hares. She wondered if these hares would think she was a real hare, or only a pretend one.
She watched them.
They were grazing together, moving around each other, not too close, but clearly comfortable as a group.
They were all female. Molly wasn’t sure how she knew that. But she did know it, even more clearly than she’d know whether a distant teenager in jeans and t-shirt was a boy or a girl.
These were girl hares.
So she moved towards them.
She knew they could see her. Her own vision was so wide she could see almost everything around her, except just in front of her nose and just behind her head. The hares had stopped cropping the grass. They were all standing very still.
Then the largest hare turned round to watch Molly approaching.
Was there a hare language? Molly wondered. Would she understand it?
Molly loped closer.
The other two hares turned round.
She moved even closer. Slowly. Not wanting to scare them.
But they didn’t seem scared. They didn’t seem suspicious or puzzled. They just stared at her.
The largest hare loped towards her. Molly tried to look friendly, with no idea what a hare would think was friendly. The hare reached Molly and stood up, showing her pale belly. Molly nodded a greeting.
The large hare punched her. Just whacked her, right on the nose. And again. And again. Punching, boxing, hitting.
Molly squealed, a noise she hadn’t known she could make, and backed off.
She raised her own front paws, planning to fight back. Then she realised this hare was just defending her territory, or her babies, or her grass, or something else important to a real wild hare. Molly didn’t want any of those things. Molly didn’t want to fight her.
So when the hare bobbed forward to punch her again, Molly turned and ran away. She ran as fast as she could, away from the hares, towards the witch’s farm, hoping with all her heart, for the first time, that she could lift this curse, and that she wouldn’t have to spend her life trying to make friends with hares who punched her before even getting to know her.
She ran, knowing the only native animal in Scotland that could overtake her – a larger hare – was right behind her. But as she darted under the gate, the other hares were already nibbling grass again. Like she hadn’t even been there.
Molly sprinted across the last few fields to Mrs Sharpe’s farm. And she thought about grass. She’d never eaten as a hare. She’d always changed back in time to eat human food. If she was stuck as a hare, would she have to eat grass?
She stopped and looked at the grass under her paws. She bent down and sniffed the sour salad smell.
No. She wasn’t hungry enough. She’d try eating grass later if she absolutely had to.
As she ran through the last field, Innes joined her, sweating from his gallop and jumps.
Molly knew that even though she was faster than Innes, she wasn’t a true shapeshifter like him. He was equally at home as a horse or a boy. She wasn’t really a hare. Perhaps it was time to accept that: to say goodbye to the speed and freedom of being a hare. Perhaps she really did have to find a way to lift this curse forever.
She leapt over the fence into the road, and ran between Mrs Sharpe’s gateposts.
She felt an unfamiliar fizzing in her bones, tumbled forward in an uncontrolled somersault and caught a wideangle glimpse of fur-covered paws stretching into long bony fingers. Then her vision narrowed, her hands hit the ground and her palms scraped painfully across the gravel.
Molly was a girl again.
But it had never happened like that before. She’d never seen herself shift from one shape to another; it usually happened too fast.
Molly shivered. Her curse had definitely got worse.
Chapter Two
“That makes no sense.” Innes watched as Molly clambered to her feet and picked grit out of her palms. “Why did you change here? What’s different about Mrs Sharpe’s gate? You went through lots of gates on the way.”
“Let’s ask her.” Molly walked up the track towards the farm shop, relieved she was a girl again and hoping her curse might soon return to its usual manageable magic. She also hoped Innes hadn’t seen what happened in the grassy field.
But he grinned and started jabbing her in the arm with his fist. “So, you win races, but you don’t win boxing matches. What did you do to annoy them? Did you say something rude?”
She pushed his hand away. “I didn’t say anything. I just wanted to see if I could communicate with them.”
“They certainly communicated with you. The ‘Get out of our field NOW!’ was pretty clear. Are you ok?”
“Fine. It was better than meeting a fox. Or a curse-hatched crow, or a grumpy wyrm, or any of the other things that have attacked me recently. It was certainly better than when you tried to drown me in your river.”
Innes muttered, “I wasn’t trying to drown you, just scare you off.”
“But you didn’t scare me off.” She smiled. “So that hare was more effective than you.” She walked under the sign:
and stepped into the shop, followed by Innes.
It was full of vegetables, fruit, herbs and fresh smells, but Mrs Sharpe wasn’t there.
Innes said, “She’ll be out the back, gathering parsnips or something.”
Molly leant against the wall by the till, nudging a bucket of earthy potatoes with her toe. “I recognise that tattie. I dug it up myself, while I was chatting to the mysterious toad.”
She pointed at another potato. “That one even looks like a toad. See, those could be bulgy eyes…”
“I wonder what happened to the toad, after he turned into that boy,” said Innes. “He didn’t even stay around and thank you properly after you’d saved him by giving up the chance to be free of your own curse.”
Molly shrugged. “He did say thanks, very briefly, before he vanished.”
“He didn’t say who he was, though. Or who had cursed him, or why. He’d worked with us for days, he knew all our secrets, then he just whirled away without telling us anything.”
Molly thought about the dark boy with the scarred head and the sand-coloured cloak. “Maybe his secrets were more dangerous than ours?”
“Or more embarrassing!” said Innes.
“I’m going to look for Mrs Sharpe.” Molly walked behind the till and pushed at the back door. The gust of air as it jerked open lifted a gleaming black feather from the counter. She held out her hand and the feather drifted onto her palm. She put it in her pocket so she could use both hands to shove the stiff door further open, and walked out into the farmyard.
She checked the barns and sheds, and looked out the top-floor windows of the bunkhouse they’d stayed in last week. But she didn’t spot the white-haired witch anywhere. Molly returned to the shop, where Innes was nibbling a carrot.
“I didn’t see her. Maybe the curse-hatched crows scared her so much that she’s left town.”
Innes shook his head. “Her magic is bound to her fields, so she’d feel more vulnerable if she went too far from her farm.” He opened the shop door. “We’ll come back later, if your curse goes weird again.”
They stepped outside.
“What are you two doing here? Buying a snack or sucking up to the witch?” A slim girl with drifting purple hair was leaning against a half-barrel planted with lavender. “You said you’d come straight back to my woods after your race. We were worried about you, weren’t we, Atacama?”
A black cat slid out of the shadows by the side of the shop: a cat whose head was higher than Molly’s waist, who had an almost-human face under his sharp cat ears and a pair of narrow wings folded on his sleek back.
“I wasn’t worried,” said the sphinx in his deep voice. “I assumed you were racing all the way to Aberlour and back.”
“How did you know we we
re here, Beth?” asked Molly.
The purple-haired dryad smiled. “A couple of daisy fairies told me they’d seen a white stallion galloping towards the farm.”
“So, Innes, who won?” asked Atacama, his long-nosed face completely serious, as if he didn’t know the answer. “Who won the race this time?”
Innes sighed.
Molly grinned. “I did. But Innes won the ‘becoming human at the end of the race’ prize. I stayed a hare. Even when I leapt fences, walls and gates, even when I was definitely crossing a boundary from one person’s land to another, I stayed a hare.”
Beth turned even paler than usual. “You didn’t change back? That’s terrible! Did Mrs Sharpe turn you back?”
“No, we came here for advice, but I shifted at the farm gates.”
“Just as well,” added Innes, “because the witch isn’t here.”
“Mrs Sharpe’s not here?” said Atacama. “Really? That’s unusual at this time of day, isn’t it? So… em… is anyone worried about her? Is there any sign of trouble in the shop?”
“Nope,” said Innes. “She’ll just be delivering cabbages to someone with a coleslaw crisis—”
“How can you joke?” snapped Beth. “If Molly’s curse is getting worse, that’s really serious. What was it like, being trapped as a hare?”
“Being a hare for a wee while is fine, so long as I don’t meet a fox or a greyhound. But thinking it would never end was horrible. I didn’t think I’d ever talk to you again, or eat pizza, or pick up a pencil, or use a phone. So I hope it doesn’t happen again.”
“There’s only one way to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” said Beth. “Lift or break your curse.”
“That’s what you always say. But look, here I am, safely back to a girl again. So perhaps it’s not the curse itself that’s the problem, it’s just not working right today. Why would that happen, Atacama?”
The sphinx sat down neatly beside her, his tail wrapped round his paws. “Curses don’t usually get worse. Mrs Sharpe might know of a precedent, but I’ve never heard of it. I suppose the curse-caster could reword the curse to change the rules, but I doubt anyone else could. If another magic-user wanted to hurt you, they would cast a new curse.”