A Sprinkle of Sorcery

by Michelle Harrison

  ‘Not to mention sharing a room with you two is driving me barmy,’ Betty put in.

  ‘I like sharing a room!’ Charlie protested.

  ‘So do I, but we’re running out of space,’ said Betty. ‘What with all your creatures, and Fliss’s mountain of love letters—’

  ‘Hardly a mountain,’ Fliss muttered, flushing scarlet. ‘The point is, this is home.’

  Betty felt a bubble of frustration rise up. Trust Fliss to be sentimental!

  ‘I know.’ Granny sighed, her voice softening. ‘But the thought that we can’t leave . . . Well, it makes it feel less like home, and more like . . . like a prison.’

  The girls fell silent, exchanging glances. They knew better than anyone how it felt to be trapped. Until Betty’s thirteenth birthday, the Widdershins had lived under a curse preventing them from leaving Crowstone. But together Betty and her sisters had broken the curse . . . with the help of a little family magic. It was a secret only the three of them shared. And the Widdershins sisters were good at keeping secrets.

  ‘Fliss,’ Charlie said suddenly, sniffing. ‘What’s that smell?’

  ‘Jumping jackdaws!’ Fliss cried, rushing away through the door that led upstairs. A couple of minutes later, she returned with a tray of blackened gingerbread shapes and began offering them around.

  ‘Can’t eat that,’ Fingerty exclaimed, inspecting a singed piece. ‘I’ll break me teeth!’

  ‘It’s only burnt at the edges,’ Fliss said, offended. She pushed her dark fringe out of her eyes, blinking hard.

  Betty reached for the least charred piece she could see, trying not to cough as smoke went down her throat. ‘Mmm,’ she mumbled unconvincingly.

  Before Fliss could retort, Charlie helped herself to two large pieces. ‘One for me, one for Hoppit.’

  ‘Are you on about that rat again?’ Granny asked, placing her hands stoutly on her hips. ‘Oh, Charlie. If you must have an imaginary pet, why can’t you have a nice one?’

  ‘Rats are nice,’ said Charlie, crunching determinedly. ‘And don’t worry, Granny. He’s safe in my pocket.’

  ‘Well, make sure he stays there,’ Granny muttered.

  Betty left Charlie and Granny to their imaginary rats. Once out of Fliss’s sight, she threw the burnt gingerbread on the nearest fire. Heading to the window again, she stared past a sprig of dried rowan berries, and Granny’s other lucky charms, into the twilight. An evening mist was creeping in from the marshes, and the bad feeling Betty had felt before deepened. She’d always scoffed at Granny’s superstitions, but no one would deny that the Widdershins had had more than their fair share of bad luck. Perhaps it was something they couldn’t escape easily . . . like Crowstone itself.

  Through the wispy grey, a figure came into view. A warder was prowling the street across the green, knocking on doors. There would be more of them, Betty knew. Searching for whoever had dared to escape. The warders wouldn’t stop until the prisoner had been found. Soon they’d cross the green and arrive at the Poacher’s Pocket, sniffing around and bringing questions and suspicion.

  A movement under the vast oak tree on the green caught Betty’s attention. Two figures were standing in the shadows under the branches, staring towards the Poacher’s Pocket. It was hard to tell, but they looked like men. Betty’s heartbeat quickened. These had to be the people they were expecting, the potential buyers . . . brothers, Granny had said. From their movements, Betty could tell they were having a disagreement.

  One of them gestured impatiently, taking a step towards the inn. The other shook his head, pointing first at the inn, then at the warder going from door to door. Betty watched, heart sinking, as they turned in the direction of the ferry, their footsteps in time with the clanging prison bell. She could imagine the conversation: Not worth the bother . . . What kind of place is this? We can find something better . . .

  Her eyes smarting with smoke and disappointment, she stepped back from the window. Granny was right, Betty thought. They wouldn’t be selling this place any time soon.

  But Granny wasn’t right about everything. The Widdershins would be getting visitors before the night was out . . . just not the ones they were expecting.

  Chapter Two

  The Sign of the Crow

  ‘CHARLIE!’ FLISS EXCLAIMED. ‘WHY ARE there crumbs all over my bed?’

  ‘Cos I couldn’t sit on mine.’ Charlie cuffed butter off her chin and gestured to the bed she shared with Betty. ‘She’s taking up all the room. As usual.’

  Fliss wafted into the bedroom, towelling off her short dark hair. Steamy, rose-petal-scented air followed her. She brushed the crumbs off her pillow and then stood at the looking glass, combing out her wet hair and sighing happily.

  Betty glanced up from the maps she had spread all over the bed. ‘At least one of us is pleased about Granny’s new two-baths-a-week rule,’ she said.

  It was evening now. Darkness pressed in against the draughty windows, and below them murmured voices could be heard as Granny prepared to close up the Poacher’s Pocket for the night.

  Earlier, when the warders had arrived, rapping their batons and barking their questions, a hush had spread throughout the place, making the bell outside seem even louder. ‘Two runaways,’ they’d said, sending whispers scurrying round the pub once more. ‘One washed up, half drowned, not expected to survive the night. The other still at large . . .’ Then, about an hour after the warders had cleared out, the bell had finally stopped.

  Betty had expected to feel relief – they must have found whoever they were looking for – but she was still unable to shake the feeling of unease. She tried to tell herself it was just the menacing presence of the warders. The last time they’d appeared in the Poacher’s Pocket like that was a couple of months back, to investigate two warders who’d vanished without a trace – and they’d put everyone on edge then, too.

  ‘Can’t wait till we sell this place,’ Charlie said now, jolting Betty back to the present. She stuffed another piece of toast into her mouth. ‘Then we can stop all this dressing up and washing. One bath a week is bad enough.’

  ‘Soap dodger,’ Betty muttered, even though she secretly agreed. Not that she minded baths, but they were just one of several things that made her hair so annoyingly frizzy.

  ‘What you looking at this time?’ Charlie asked, perching on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Places,’ said Betty. For a moment, the nagging worry she had been feeling eased and she felt a sudden rush of excitement, the way she always did when she was studying maps. So many places to explore! There was a whole world waiting for them away from Crowstone. Where would they end up?

  ‘What about this: Great Snodbury. That sounds exciting. There’s a forest, and a castle ruin—’

  Fliss snorted. ‘You can’t tell what a place is like just by the sound of it!’

  ‘You can with Crowstone,’ Betty retorted. ‘It sounds gloomy and it is.’

  ‘What about there?’ Charlie asked, pointing a sticky finger dangerously close to Betty’s precious maps. ‘That’s near a beach. Beg . . . Beg . . .’

  ‘Beggars’ Roost,’ Betty finished. ‘Sounds about right. Beggars can’t be choosers – that’s what Granny always says. And that’s us.’ She swiped Charlie’s hand away. ‘Have you been hogging the lavender jam again, you greedy beast?’

  ‘Yep.’ Charlie hopped off the bed, licking her fingers. She wandered over to the chest of drawers and picked up a set of painted wooden nesting dolls, fiddling with them craftily.

  Betty, seeing what Charlie was up to, mouthed, ‘Don’t!’ – but it was too late. In one movement, Charlie had twisted the halves of the outermost doll a full turn counter-clockwise, her eyes trained on Fliss in impish expectation.

  Fliss, who’d been dabbing home-made scent on her wrists, suddenly shrieked as a three-legged brown rat appeared before her, seemingly out of nowhere.

  ‘Charlie!’ she exploded. The perfume bottle slipped from her fingers and landed on the floor, leaking it
s contents. ‘You and that blasted rat! Stop doing that!’

  Charlie scooped up the rat, erupting in giggles. ‘Oh, Hoppit,’ she whispered gleefully. ‘We got her good, didn’t we?’

  Fliss pursed her lips. ‘Those dolls aren’t toys, you know.’

  ‘Fliss is right.’ Betty said, rolling up her maps and putting them away before plucking the nesting dolls from her little sister and giving Charlie’s pigtail a gentle tug. ‘They’re not some magic trick you can use whenever you feel like it.’ Betty stroked the smooth wood fondly. ‘They’re a secret . . . and they’re special. The most valuable thing we possess.’

  She had received the dolls on her thirteenth birthday, a gift that had been passed down through generations of Widdershins girls. But these were no ordinary dolls.

  ‘I call it a pinch of magic,’ Granny had said. And Betty had watched, utterly thrilled and disbelieving, as she’d learned of the dolls’ strange power. For, by placing something small of her own inside the second largest doll, Betty could make herself vanish. And, by hiding something belonging to someone else in the third doll, that person would disappear, too. In both instances, the dolls had to be placed one inside the other, exactly aligned. At the moment the halves of the outermost doll were perfectly matched up, the intended person – or people – would vanish. To reverse the magic and become visible, the top of the outer doll had to be twisted a full turn counter-clockwise.

  As Betty opened up the dolls, she shook her head. There, in the centre of the third doll was a long, thin rat’s whisker.

  ‘Only you would think to hide a rat with them,’ Betty said, a smile tugging at her lips as she ruffled Charlie’s already messy hair.

  Charlie tapped her little upturned nose and grinned. ‘Got to keep him hidden from Granny somehow.’

  ‘Wish you’d keep him hidden from me, too,’ Fliss grouched.

  ‘Keep who hidden?’ a voice boomed, making all three of them jump.

  Instinctively, Betty closed the dolls, lining up the outer halves so Hoppit vanished in Charlie’s arms. She whipped the dolls behind her back as their father popped his head around the doorway.

  ‘No one!’ the girls chorused.

  Barney Widdershins grinned, his cheeks round and ruddy like Granny’s and his hair as much of a bird’s nest as Charlie’s. ‘For a moment there, I thought Fliss was hiding another boyfriend,’ he joked.

  Fliss blushed and swatted him with her towel.

  ‘Going somewhere?’ Betty asked, noticing that Father had his coat on.

  He nodded, scratching his bristly chin. ‘Catching the last ferry to Marshfoot. There’s a pub being auctioned in the morning, but I figured I might be able to interest someone there in this place. I should be back by teatime tomorrow.’ He tweaked Charlie’s nose. ‘That’s if you haven’t eaten it all!’

  Their father’s easy words smoothed away more of Betty’s niggles. If anyone could sweet-talk a buyer for the Poacher’s Pocket, it was Barney Widdershins. He possessed a knack for charming people, something Fliss had inherited (along with a tendency to blab things that were better left unsaid).

  After whiskery kisses for them all, he creaked down the stairs. Betty watched from the window as he vanished across Nestynook Green into an ever-thickening fog, carrying their hopes with them.

  • • •

  Sometime later, Betty woke up with a jolt as the windowpane rattled, sending a damp draught scuttling over her pillow. With sleep tugging at her, she burrowed further down under her covers. Then something made her open her eyes.

  The room was quiet. Too quiet. Betty turned over and squinted blearily. Charlie was a noisy sleeper, and normally the silence was punctuated by snuffles and snores. But now Betty heard nothing except the sound of her own breathing. She blinked the last of her sleepiness away.

  Charlie’s side of the bed was a rumple of sheets. And Charlie wasn’t in it.

  Betty sat up, listening. Could her little sister be raiding the larder as she sometimes did in the night? Charlie had been told enough times not to pilfer, but her bottomless tummy always got the better of her. Last time, she’d eaten her way through half a loaf of bread meant for breakfast. Granny had been properly cranky and threatened to make her clean out the creepy cupboard on the landing.

  Well, Granny can deal with it in the morning, Betty thought with a yawn. But still she sat, listening and waiting for some telltale rattle or clink from the kitchen to betray her sister’s whereabouts. None came. With growing curiosity, Betty slid out of bed and stuffed her feet into her boots.

  On the far side of the room, Fliss slumbered soundlessly. She looked like a pixie, Betty thought, with her short dark hair sticking up in tufts round her oval face. Even in sleep, her older sister was far too prim to do anything as unattractive as snore.

  Pulling a shawl round her shoulders, Betty crept to the door and paused. Rumbling snores came from Granny’s room. She glanced in the direction of the kitchen. It was silent and dark.

  She stepped out into the hallway and headed for the stairs. The smell of beer and Granny’s pipe smoke deepened as she reached the bottom. Slowly, she pushed the door, then froze. Granny’s lucky horseshoe above the door frame was upside down. How had that happened? Everyone knew how finicky Granny was about it being the right way up so the luck wouldn’t trickle out. Quickly, Betty straightened it and silently scolded herself. Horseshoes, crows . . . she was getting as bad as Granny! And yet . . . that niggling, uneasy feeling was back.

  Betty glanced past the empty tables and chairs, the air still faintly warm from the glowing embers in the fireplaces. Still no Charlie.

  Her pulse quickened. Stay calm, she told herself. Six-year-old girls don’t just vanish. Especially not ones as rambunctious as Charlie Widdershins.

  Could she have had bad dreams and crept into bed with Granny? It was worth checking. Betty turned to go back upstairs, and tripped over something warm and hissing at her feet.

  ‘Oi!’ Betty hissed back (partly because she was annoyed, and partly because this was, in fact, the ‘something’s’ name). The cat shot her a filthy look and skulked to the back door. He raked his claws down the wood with a low, demanding meow.

  ‘I am not your servant!’ Betty whispered, but, as Oi fixed her with a poisonous yellow glare, she knew that actually she was. The price for not letting the cat out was both unpleasant and stinky, and it was usually Betty who had to mop it up the next day.

  ‘Darn cat,’ she grumbled, reaching for the key to the door. To her surprise, she found it was already unlocked. ‘Surely not . . .’

  A chilly gust of wind whistled round her ankles as Betty pushed the door open. She stepped out into the courtyard, with Oi zipping past her feet. The moon was a hazy smudge in the sky and the air was filled with the salty smell of the marshes. Betty strained to see through the blanket of fog that had enveloped her and which was even thicker than a cloud of Granny’s pipe smoke. The cobblestone yard was full of crates of empty glass bottles and stacked beer barrels, waiting for return to the brewery.

  Betty edged round the crates, peering into the shadowy corners of the yard. A faint whispering noise reached her ears, and, for the tiniest moment, local stories flooded back to her. Tales of fishermen and escaped prisoners who’d been lost to the mists and now haunted the local marshes. Then Betty shook herself and remembered she was determined not to believe in that sort of thing.

  ‘Charlie?’ she whispered into the darkness. ‘You out here?’

  Silence. Then another faint whisper, followed by shuffling. A small head with two untidy pigtails emerged from behind a beer barrel. Two wild eyes stared back at her.

  ‘Meddling magpies, Charlie!’ Betty grumbled, her racing heart slowing as thoughts of ghosts melted away. ‘What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?’ She shivered into her shawl and hurried over to the furthest corner of the yard, where there was a tiny area of boggy grass and a sparse flower bed.

  Charlie, too, had dressed in her outdoor clothes,
her dark coat melting into the shadows.

  At her feet by the flower bed lay a trowel and a matchbox, with something small and feathered inside. It wasn’t moving. Betty’s heart sank. No doubt Oi had been up to his usual tricks.

  ‘Charlie!’ Betty’s pity turned into exasperation. Now she knew why her animal-mad little sister had sneaked off in the night. She gestured to the flower bed, where rows of twigs stuck out, each one marking a tiny grave. ‘You know Granny said no more burying dead creatures!’

  She broke off, noticing that Charlie was barely listening.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Betty asked. ‘Why are you being so weird?’

  Charlie shifted, pointing with a shaky finger.

  Behind her, a small child was wedged into the shadowy space between two crates. Betty stared. She was probably about the same age as Charlie, six or seven, perhaps. Her thin, grimy face was streaked with tears, and the look of poverty hung all about her: from the patched, hand-me-down clothing to the hunger in her eyes.

  ‘Who . . . who is that?’ Betty breathed.

  ‘Dunno,’ Charlie whispered. ‘I just sneaked down here to do the bird funeral, and I found her hiding there.’

  The child stared back at them, wide-eyed and trembling. Charlie knelt and reached out a small hand.

  ‘Who are you?’ she whispered. ‘It’s all right. We won’t hurt you.’

  The little girl shivered, but didn’t answer. Her untidy hair hung in tendrils, and her clothes clung damply to her skin.

  ‘How did you get in here?’ Betty asked, her voice sharper than she meant it to be. The girl shrank back into the shadows, but there was a glow about her, Betty noticed. The glass bottles nearby were glittering in places the moonlight couldn’t reach. Did she have a lantern back there . . . ?

  ‘Look.’ Charlie pointed to the gate. It was locked, but there was a gap where a section of wood had rotted away. ‘She must have squeezed through.’

  Betty frowned. Something was prickling at the back of her mind like a needle.