by Paul Cornell
No, wait a second, there was something else she’d read recently, something designed specifically for use by those who couldn’t speak, what was—? No, that was no use, that was a spell she’d read up on when looking into cures for Judith’s condition. It was something a mystic, dying of natural causes, could use, no matter how weak they were, to . . .
Oh. That was a terrible thought. Reassuring to know she could do that, but . . . but . . . no, wait a second. Spells had rules. Spells were little stories of their own. Spells had boundaries and conditions and perhaps, bloody perhaps, spells also could fall prey to ironic reversals.
Okay, pain again, ride it, wish you could clench your teeth, and there it goes, fading back into what was possibly just, oh, lasting harm. No time to think any more about this then. Let’s go for it. So, step one . . .
She concentrated on the correct incantation in her mind, offered up a tiny portion of her strength, and with what tiny air her lungs and mouth could push forward . . . and here came the first terrifying bit of two, sequential, really terrifying bits, the second one even bigger than this first one . . . she blew into the air, really too close to her face, a little flame, which flared and persisted as she screamed internally at how close it was, then found it to be just about okay, and kept on channelling that tiny stream of energy to it, keeping it going.
There were shouts from ahead of her. The teenagers had turned around and were pointing back toward them. This was the scenario she’d imagined, people being puzzled by a flame in the air. Come on, you lot, show some curiosity, come and . . . that’s it, take a video of it on your phone. And you get to tapping on that phone, and yeah, you lot, come closer, come and have a closer look, start telling your friends.
It took ten minutes or so, of increasingly disturbing pain, before the first adults started to arrive. Autumn couldn’t make her eyes move to see who all of them were as they moved around and through the two of them, peering and reaching toward the flame, each seeming to need to find out for themselves if it was hot. She noted them as they went past. There was Chris the young builder, in that beard of his, and Mike who made doors, who seemed to have been out on the beer. She started to have a concussive feeling inside her as the pain burst over her again that felt worryingly like some primal, internal, wobble on the verge of collapse. Should she do it now? Before it was too late? No, wait, wait for someone . . . someone like that! It was Annette Manser from the book club, and several other societies, who every year for her grandson’s birthday would come into the magic shop mistakenly thinking she’d find a magic trick for him.
Annette was a first responder.
So. Now. While Annette’s still looking bemused at the little flame in the air. We’re going to bet everything on this, aren’t we? But we don’t have an option. And if the bet doesn’t work, well, it’s better than the alternative.
Autumn took all her anger and bravery and a memory of her dad being proud of her and put the incantation into her head that was deliberately easy to say, the incantation she’d found when seeking cures for Judith that allowed a magic-user, on their deathbed, to end themselves. She made herself breathe it out in one soft, terminal breath.
Autumn died.
3
SUDDEN DARKNESS. Autumn was aware of falling. Then of nothing.
Then she heard applause. The applause of centuries.
Then she felt pain in her chest. Then the pain suddenly blossomed to hit her entire body, a spasming of pins and needles that got into her head, too, that made her yell. And cough. And open her eyes.
And there was beloved Annette Manser, a terribly practical expression on her face, pushing down steadily on Autumn’s chest. “She’s conscious!” she called out.
“But where did she come from?” a voice that sounded like Chris with the beard was yelling.
Autumn tried to get up, but Annette started hushing her, told her to stay put. “We’ve dialled 999,” she said, “an ambulance is on the way.”
But Autumn could only look wildly around her, to the space where she knew Lizzie to be. And there she was, invisible to everyone else, but to Autumn a fine set of lines in the air, the same agony on her face.
Autumn shrugged off Annette and stumbled to her feet, pushing away the many hands which tried to help her. Someone asked if she’d been drinking. She ignored them and reached out for Lizzie. But her hand didn’t connect.
But come on, she could do this. She’d saved herself, because it turned out that one of the rules the spell that had caught them was based on was that it was designed to hold living people. She was free and she had to save Lizzie. But how?
This spell must have something to do with moving its victims into another dimension, one attached to this reality, but at one remove. So it was a bit like the divide between Lychford and the other realities on its borders. Judith had once led them on an effort to establish some swift, rough replacement borders around the town. The magic she’d used to do that had been straightforward, had been about associating and pinning, as one might, if one were a completely unethical bitch, associate a potential lover with oneself and pin them to one. And then wait for the hideous karmic consequences, but hopefully not in this case, because, as with the borders, Autumn was going to associate and pin what people mistakenly called “thin air” and soil, not a person.
“Just give me a second to do this!” she yelled, as more concerned people closed in around her. “It’s a religious gesture. It’ll make me feel calmer.” Half of them still thought she was mad. But it had at least given her the few seconds she needed. She managed to make her parched and numb lips mumble the right sounds, remembered what Judith had done with each of the points where they’d re-powered the border, made something like the right gestures, then, in a quick, decisive motion, put both arms around Lizzie and wrote a border around her in the air, annexing wherever she was and declaring it to be part of this world.
Lizzie fell into her arms, yelling in pain.
“The vicar!” someone shouted. “Where did the vicar come from?!”
And then they were all crowding in on them, asking impossible questions. Lizzie looked up into Autumn’s face, still terrified, pale with shock. “Come on,” said Autumn, “let’s get you back home.”
Using more power than she had, she managed a single step away from the crowd with her friend and said something over her shoulder that made the crowd confused about where they’d gone, and the two of them stumbled off into the night holding each other up like they were in a three-legged race, their limbs protesting with every step.
* * *
Judith stood in the woods, at night, in the freezing cold, looking down at the open grave. Well, it looked like a grave. Whose grave? Hers, probably. She was startled to see a strange woman standing beside it, but then she remembered. The woman had just caused the hole to open up in the ground. The sides were smooth, and the leaves were falling away from it. Judith looked around, wondering where her sister Doreen had got to. There she was, leaning against a tree in her ironic “glamour” pose, one hand on her hip.
Judith laughed. “Where’s that lane?”
“Over there,” said Doreen, pointing. And sure enough, there it was, over her shoulder, impossibly overlaid on the woods, leading off a little way this time, then still turning a corner, like the entrance to a maze. Down it came the smell of pure winter, of ice and air with nothing in it but frost.
Judith shivered. “That’s a real roller coaster, that one. And a maze. I know it’s a maze, don’t you laugh.”
The odd woman stepped between her and Doreen. Which was rude. “What are you talking about? You seem to wander when I’m not propping you up with my power. Oh well, not long to go now.” She pointed to the grave. “In you get.”
Doreen rolled her eyes and made her “ooh, posh” look.
“Why do you want me in there?” said Judith.
“So you’re in the right place for the plan. You’ll be nice and warm. We need you alive. Until noon tomorrow.”
“Yes, I’m a doctor, do I really have to take control of you again to just make you do this one small thing?” Suddenly, she smiled. “Go on, dear, do it just for me.”
Judith wondered, somewhere in the back of her head, if this woman knew how she’d reacted to every medical professional who’d used that tone of voice with her. But still, she supposed she knew best. She remembered that same voice getting her to climb down into a well, of all things. And that had worked out all right. Hadn’t it? She supposed it did. She gave Doreen a wink and stepped awkwardly down into the hole, giving a little cry of pain at her hip protesting.
The odd woman moved to help her. “That’s it,” she said. “Now, lie down, and I’ll bury you.”
* * *
Lizzie sat in an ancient armchair in the Vicarage, her hands around a mug of coffee. It felt like she’d been in hell. She could still feel the ache of it in her. It felt like it would never leave her. “That bitch,” she whispered. “I knew she could hurt us. I knew I was right to be afraid of her.”
“She played us,” said Autumn, pacing. “She came after us specifically, she made a plan and she carried it out.” She stopped and squatted down beside Lizzie. She seemed to be trying to stretch the pain out of her muscles. “I’m sorry I let that happen to you.”
“You didn’t let—!” Lizzie couldn’t finish that or she’d start crying, and she was damned if she was going to cry. “We have to get Judith away from her.”
“If that would make much difference. Maybe Judith’s too far gone already.” She talked right over Lizzie starting to protest. “We were her last target. She’s moving straight to doing what she came here to do. But what is that?”
“It really is something to do with wishes. She got Judith to lead us off the scent there, so that must be what this is about.”
“The wishes the posters asked for, the wishes in those Facebook comments . . .” Autumn got out her phone, sat down beside Lizzie, and found them once again. “All these radicalised wishes. They’re all about anger at other people. She’s preying on the divisions of this town.”
“By stirring up hatred on social media. Wow, maybe she’s working for the Russians.”
“That would be so much easier.”
“But if this is deliberate, that woman who started these comments . . .” Lizzie flicked up to the top. “Meadow Hill.”
Autumn quickly found a website about the origins of names. “It’s what ‘Maitland Picton’ means. She didn’t bother to conceal that very much.”
“But she did bother.”
“Yeah, so these wishes are important.”
“And so are the posters. Picton got Judith to put them up. Which is why she could get them into the woods and the well.”
Autumn paced for a moment. “Are they maybe being put in a pattern, to make a magical symbol on a map?”
“I don’t know. At the Festival meeting, there was something about posters being put in places that annoyed other groups in the town. If the placing of the posters is annoying, some of them will have been taken down by the annoyed. And we’ve taken one down ourselves. I can’t see Picton running about replacing every one that’s missing.”
“Yeah, it’s more like Picton just wanted lots of them out there, more than the Festival committee would have been willing to put up on their usual sites. So this is about critical mass. About having loads of them out there to go off in some way like, I don’t know, an enormous bombing raid?”
“She’s one of those stick figures, the sort Judith talked about seeing when we first got together. That supermarket chain’s plan was about painting signs on people’s doors, about singling people out, but it was still a sort of carpet bombing.”
“Whatever this is, it’s also stopping us from accessing the water from the well in the woods.” Autumn got up and paced to and fro. “Like a sort of gravity, like all these posters are concentrating a force which holds it back. That feels like border magic to me, like the water from the well is. Power from out there that’s being given to us. So this big lump of border magic that Picton’s built up—”
“She said it was going to make our world like hers. In one go. It’s a border inversion bomb. Or like . . . have you seen The Wrath of Khan?”
“Which one is that?”
“Where they shoot a torpedo at moons and suddenly they’re like Earth. That’s what she’s planning. To change our world into hers.”
Autumn took both Lizzie’s hands in hers and helped her stand. “We have no idea how it works, we have no idea where she’s getting the power to do it from, but we might not have time to find out. We need to find every one of those posters. Before she sets them off.”
* * *
They left the Vicarage at 4 A.M., bundled up in their warmest coats and scarves, still aching. Or at least Autumn was. She could see the pain etched onto Lizzie’s face, making her look older, burdened. And those thoughts took her straight to thinking about Judith. Should she have anticipated the possibility that the old hedge witch might be compromised? Was there anything now that could be done to save her? In Autumn’s research she had found charms that could kill, or at least that could reduce to floating cinders whatever that human body was that “Picton” was wearing. But Judith had told them both, at length, about the costs of using magic like that. Magic was like stories, but it was like money too. Effect was paid for by sacrifice, either of oneself or something else, someone else, and if it was the latter, then stealing that power echoed, rebounded, cursed and burdened.
Perhaps that was the responsibility Autumn should take on now? Literally all of human existence might be at stake.
She decided.
As they headed into town, she took a diversion to Witches, ran into her kitchen, pocketed her sharpest slicing knife, and was out again in a moment to tell Lizzie she’d just wanted to grab some protective charms.
If the worst came to the worst, for the world, or, damn it, for Judith, Autumn was just going to cut Maitland Picton’s throat.
* * *
Judith lay underground. It was dark. It was warm, down here. Well, warmer than it would be outside. Why was she here? The soil smelt nice. It was suspended in a flat surface a couple of inches over her head, and it hung in the air, the scent of a cellar, taking her back to that pub cellar where she’d kissed a barrel delivery man and to the cellar stairs at her parents’ house, which was about Christmas, because you went down them to fetch the decorations up. She suddenly felt afraid. Where were her parents? Didn’t they know she was here?
But at least Doreen was here; she’d know. She stood in the darkness, with winter light behind her. She was in a different space. She didn’t have to fit down here. “Here we are,” she said. “This is close to the truth. Won’t be long now. Have you got all you need for the journey?”
“Why, where am I going?” But nevertheless, Judith automatically patted her pockets. There was summat sticking in her hip. It was in her pinny, under her coat. She put her hand in and found she was holding a book. What good was that down here? No light to read by. Oh, stupid girl, of course there was. The light of the lane behind Doreen would let her read. Now, if she could just get it out . . . She slid it up her body and found there was just enough space to get it in front of her face and slide it open, sideways. That was why she had done that thing, wasn’t it? What thing? Oh, yes, she’d arched her back when she’d lain down, given herself an inch or two she wouldn’t have otherwise had when she’d relaxed down onto the ground.
Well, that had been an odd thing to do. The rumbling in her stomach had told her to do it. What was that about? What was this book? She smiled when she saw her own handwriting. Oh! These were her stories. About elves—not the elves she’d known, elves when she’d made them up. These words had been where she’d started making stuff up. And she was making still. In this protected book. Another pain from her guts told her not to
be satisfied with the start. She needed the ending. Where was the last page? Oh ah, here it were, the new writing, or the old writing, the old person writing, because on the last page, her handwriting was spidery and all over the place.
Why had she written a new story? Her stomach rebelled against her again. Or . . . no, it were obeying rather than rebelling, doing what it was supposed to. Whatever that was.
“Is it a good book?” asked Doreen, who had a look on her face that said Judith should just get on with it.
“Oh ah,” said Judith. “It’s everything I need to know. Just you keep that light on.”
“It’s not meant to be for you to read by.”
“I know what it’s for. But that’s not what it’s going to be used for. Not yet.”
* * *
Lizzie couldn’t stop shivering as they marched from noticeboard to noticeboard, in the darkness before dawn. Their only companions were cats, a milkman that waved to them, and the birds starting to shout about territory and power in a chorus that people found light and cheerful and rousing.
She couldn’t help but reduce it to what it was. She had darkness in her heart. They ripped and snatched the posters from all the obvious places, but they had no idea what was enough, had no idea where all of them were. Where was Judith? Could she be forced to attack them? If Picton found out they were alive, she might well get Judith to do that. Could they stand against her?
They came to the central noticeboard in the marketplace, the one by the post office that was also a coffee shop. There were lights inside the building, the smell of percolation from within. The noticeboard was locked.
“I think it’s a council one,” said Autumn, rubbing her gloved fingers together. If they were like Lizzie’s, they were numb from pulling and tearing in the cold. They were carrying two shopping bags full of crumpled up posters now. If Autumn had any idea what they were going to do with them, she’d kept it to herself. “You have to get the key from the town hall offices.”