Witches of Lychford Series, Book 1

by Paul Cornell

  The crowd leapt up around Lizzie, Autumn, and Judith, a roar of triumph blotting out anything Lizzie might have wanted to say. She grabbed Autumn, and they held each other. After a moment, they looked to Judith. The smile had faded. She was looking extremely offended.

  While the townspeople in the hall were still celebrating, commiserating, and debating, and Shaun was asking Maureen urgent questions, in answer to which she was sadly nodding, Autumn led them out of the hall. “I risk my soul, or whatever you want to call it,” Judith was saying, “with forbidden magics, and she thinks I’ve gone doolally!”

  Lizzie saw Cummings, flanked by Sovo workers, leaving the hall at speed, hoping to avoid the local media. He was stumbling, limping, waving away employees who were trying to offer him assistance. It almost looked like he’d been physically harmed. “I’d prefer to say that she felt sympathy for you and that pricked her conscience.”

  Judith just glared at her, then looked to Autumn. “What did you do?”

  Autumn led them to a door in the Market Place, a coffee shop that was home to a couple who’d been against Sovo. The symbol still burned bright, but now it was different, Lizzie saw, the triangle having been turned into a pentagram. Autumn took a coffee jar full of paint from her coat pocket. “You were right, Judith. The shape of the symbol was the important thing. We couldn’t erase them, or paint over them, but with enough of the right sort of paint, I added to them. I made them into this.” She held up the symbol on her necklace. “It takes doing. Four more triangles on each and a fiddly bit in the middle. Some of them went really wrong. I’m glad that didn’t, you know, turn anyone into anything.”

  “A manipulation,” said Judith. “You found a way.”

  “Where did you get the paint and that herb knot thing?” asked Lizzie.

  “From us,” said a voice nearby. They all turned to see what Lizzie took to be Finn, clad not very sensibly in a vest and jeans, his breath not visible on the air like theirs were. He was also holding a pot of paint and a brush. “I helped.”

  “Is that him?” asked Lizzie.

  “Oh, thank God, you can see him,” said Autumn.

  “Bloody fairies,” said Judith. “You went to the lands again, then?”

  “I went to see his father,” said Autumn, and there was again a tremor in her voice. “I apologised for offending him. I . . . managed to look at him. He replied, and his voice was . . . I didn’t understand what he said.”

  Finn sighed. “He accepted your sacrifice of fear.”

  “And you made a sacrifice,” said Judith, “having appealed to a higher power. It took all three.”

  “I’m not clear on what happened after that. Things went into a kind of blur. I think something happened with time.”

  “Dad,” said Finn, “had all the Summerland gather what you needed and sent you back to be his sword and shield and save the way of the worlds and made sure you arrived back way before the meeting started, and sent me with you to do the bit with the doors in record time, without anyone seeing.”

  “Yeah,” said Autumn, “I thought it must be something like that.”

  “I have to report back,” said Finn. “Will I see you again?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Annoying. But also . . . excellent. Nobody ever plays hard to get.” He walked into a shadow and after a moment Lizzie realised he wasn’t there anymore.

  “So,” she said, “that’s a fairy.”

  “Yeah,” whispered Autumn.

  “He didn’t look like a fairy.”

  “What were you expecting?”

  “For him to look like a fairy.”

  Judith looked to Autumn and sized her up for a moment before finally nodding. “That was . . . all right.” She paused for a moment and seemed to decide on something. “I’m not getting any younger. Despite everything I’ve tried. You two . . . you’re not on my list of what I don’t like. The great powers find failure in their incarnations very hard to deal with. They tend to withdraw their influence, leaving their human forms a bit ill and angry, but you know what it’s like dealing with a dying wasp. He might well have another go. Or sneak in to cause havoc in some other way. And other things in the darkness out there, things like I’ve met recently, might have seen how shaky the walls of Lychford are getting, and right now will be thinking about having a go, whether or not they’ve got Cummings to help them. If you two are willing, perhaps it’s time for me to take on an apprentice, and to take more seriously the traditional relationship between the local wise woman and the clergy.”

  “Are you saying you could use our help?” said Autumn.

  “Don’t push it.”

  “Because I was going to say I could use your help in the shop.”

  “Your wisdom, she means,” said Lizzie. “To make the shop into what it needs to be.”

  Judith glowered, but held out her hand, then looked away and almost imperceptibly nodded as Lizzie and then Autumn took it. After a second, she shook away their touch. “Lychford is going to need us,” she said.

  “The only thing is,” said Lizzie, “I’m not sure what good I’ll be to you. I . . .” She was going to say that nowhere in all this had she found her faith. Cummings was certainly some sort of evil supernatural power, but that didn’t seem to imply to her the presence of a God, any more than it did in the movies. Looking at Autumn’s ill-concealed pleasure, however, she didn’t feel like raining on her parade. “I . . . didn’t do anything to help.”

  Judith actually smiled. “You will,” she said quietly. Then, declining Lizzie’s offer of help, she pushed off with her stick and marched off unsteadily towards her home.

  Autumn and Lizzie ended up in the Plough, where a number of those from the meeting had congregated. From what Lizzie could overhear, it seemed shared jokes about the mayor’s confession and Judith’s eccentricity were starting to once more pull the town together.

  “What were you trying to tell me earlier?” asked Autumn.

  So Lizzie, haltingly at first, proceeded to tell her at first just about Joe, but then, unable to stop herself, about everything.

  “Oh,” said Autumn. “Oh, no.” She took Lizzie’s hands in her own. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. And . . . I’m sorry you’re having a wobble about your faith.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I got to find out how real my impossible beings were. I even got to show them to other people. But you—”

  “That’s something I’d have gone through even if all this hadn’t happened.”

  “We should catch up. We should catch up right now,” decided Autumn. “Until closing time.”

  She was pleasingly shocked when Lizzie took off her collar.

  Judith made her way slowly back to her house, feeling the exhaustion brought on by using the dark stuff. She’d only done it twice before in her whole life. The sense of potency it gave you . . . well, she could see why it was so addictive. That was why Robin had turned out to be someone who could do . . . what he’d done to her. She might have known, though, that Cummings would have been immune to her ultimate weapon. That darkness was what he breathed.

  “Judith!” The voice as she reached for her keys made her jump, but it was just Sunil, catching up with her. “I tried to find you after the meeting—”

  Judith didn’t want to deal with this now. Her being so shaken up, she felt like she might give in to how she felt about him. “I’m sorry, I’m very tired.”

  “But you’re all right?”

  “Not quite gibbering, if that’s what you mean.”

  He took her hand. She felt how cold her hand was in his. “I know you believe in this. And so, I’m guessing what you did back there was pretty extreme. Judith, come back with me, let me get you some food, sit by my fire. Don’t go into that cold house all alone.”

  She looked to the upstairs window, and saw the light of Arthur’s television. She was so tempted. “I can’t.”

  “It’s your husband, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,”
she whispered.

  “Judith, I know Arthur was your whole world. He was my friend too. But it’s been ten years since he died, ten years since the funeral.”

  “I know,” she said quietly. She let go of his hand, and he let her, and she didn’t look at him again, but instead went inside and closed the door behind her.

  Epilogue

  That Sunday, despite a hangover which had lasted all of yesterday, Lizzie got to her church early and unlocked everything and lit the candles with half an hour to go before the early service. She was now, she realised as she stood looking towards the altar, a priest who believed in fairies but wasn’t sure if she believed in God. She could feel the gravity of this building, the way it was connected to everything, and that felt good, but there was still nothing beyond that. She went to the flowers that stood in front of the old map on the wall and moved them out of the way. People would ask questions. That was good.

  She was now also friends, once again, with the town’s most obvious pagan. That was a friendship that was going to cause fewer mutterings in the congregation than one might expect. Anglicans were, when it came down to it, generally tolerant types with ecumenical interests. Having Autumn back in her life was a source of great joy. Joy enough to make up for the damage it was going to do to her liver. She missed a greater joy, though. She missed it very much and wondered if having Autumn around might somehow prevent her from ever finding it again.

  She went to the organ stool and found once again the hidden collection plate, still with the money on it. She lifted it out. She’d have a big congregation coming in later this morning for the main service. She didn’t feel like hiding anything now. So, what was she going to do with this money?

  She felt the presence of him beside her, and turned, quite calmly in the circumstances, to find him there. “Mr. Cummings.”

  He looked rough around the edges, like he’d slept in his suit. Even with her new senses, she still couldn’t feel anything strange about him. She couldn’t now, though, quite imagine him going back to one of the hotels on the ring road. “Do the poor know you allow yourself such luxury?” he said, pointing to the collection plate. He sounded a little desperate. He stumbled, had to grab at a pew to hold himself up, and as he did so, he let a little of his remaining power show. It was like hearing distant thunder. The size of it made Lizzie gasp and take a step back. She was suddenly scared for herself, if not for her town. It felt to her now like this wounded beast might do anything.

  “What luxury?”

  “Doubt. Why haven’t you taken that?”

  Now she had an answer. “Because I’d owe you something.”

  “Oh, come on now. When you think I’m . . . whatever you think I am? You still feel you’d have to repay me? “

  After everything that had happened, why had he chosen to come back here? What did he want with her? She failed to speak, and then managed it, not quite knowing from where inside her the word came. “Yes.”

  “But I want to do something good! Please, just this one small thing. I hereby declare to whoever is listening that I will not seek any recompense for you taking that money. No bargains. Nothing. It is a gift.”

  She was almost crying again, and she had no idea why. “You just want me to do what you tell me.”

  He was suddenly yelling. “It’s not my ego that’s the problem here! Lizzie, if you asked anyone in your congregation, they’d say take that money and give it to the poor. What else are you for? What else is the institution you belong to for, if not to walk the walk rather than all the talk talk talk? That’s what you’ve said yourself in the past, though it seems you didn’t mean it. It would be laughing in my face now for you to take that money. Joe would have wanted you to take that money.”

  Lizzie made herself meet his gaze, and suddenly realised that in it she’d found everything she needed. She went and grabbed a candle and before he could say anything else she thrust the flame into the bundle of notes. It burst into flame, perhaps more quickly and more powerfully than money should? She wasn’t sure. She’d never seen money burn before.

  Cummings began a slow handclap. “Oh well done. Bravo! Wait until the newspapers hear. What is the Church of England coming to?”

  “I’ll find the money myself. Every penny.”

  “That’s the spirit! How long do you think that’ll take you? Until you retire? Not even then?” He stepped forward, into her face, smiling an enormous, desperate, demanding smile. “I could pop back every now and then, offer you some useful ways of making extra cash. What do you say?”

  “I say . . .” Lizzie put her fingers to the crucifix on her necklace. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”

  He didn’t hiss like a vampire in a movie. He stumbled back a couple of steps. He looked at her like a child who’d had his magic trick spoiled. “Well,” he muttered, “now you know.” Suddenly, he was gone. He just wasn’t there anymore. He left a slight smell of dust in the air. It felt to Lizzie like something had finally fallen apart.

  Lizzie blinked. She took a hesitant step forward into the space where he’d been. She found she had inside her a feeling she’d misplaced for so long. In a moment, she would go and kneel. She looked back to the plate where all that remained of the money was ashes. Her heart sank at the sight, but now there was only so far it could sink. “We’ll hold a bingo night,” she whispered. “An enormous bingo night.”

  In the early afternoon, Lizzie got back to the vicarage, having preached a couple of—perhaps a bit too emotional—sermons, the personal aspects of which had made the churchwardens raise an eyebrow. She was going to have to have a word with them, to find out the details of what they’d found too unbelievable to tell. “Well,” Sue had said as she was tidying up the church, “you’ve got into your stride. Finally.” Lizzie found the letter she’d written to the bishop, ripped it up, and threw the pieces into the bin. She needed to tell Judith and Autumn about Cummings.

  Later for that. She went and flopped onto the sofa, exhausted. She allowed her thoughts to drift, and she fell asleep in the low light of the autumn afternoon and dreamed, as she’d expected to, of Joe. They walked again in the sunshine beside that deadly road. “You wanted me to give that money to the poor,” she said.

  “You never bloody did what I said.”

  “I’ve gotten my faith back, and more. There’s even more to the universe than I thought there was.”

  “Brilliant.”

  “Goodbye, Joe,” she said.

  If you liked Witches of Lychford,

  check out this excerpt from Paul Cornell’s next novella

  The Lost Child of Lychford

  available November 2016.

  Copyright © 2016 by Paul Cornell

  The Reverend Lizzie Blackmore slowly blinked awake, and found, to her surprise, that she was already furious. She was furious as if she’d been angry in her dreams, oppressed and confined by something she couldn’t recall, and waking up was just one more damned thing. But why? It must be the sound, she decided, an irritating, whiny sound that was wheedling itself into her brain and then poking it.

  She looked over at her clock radio and swore at it. “It’s still two weeks to Christmas, and you’re playing Greg Lake?!”

  * * *

  “The song ‘I Believe in Father Christmas,’” she continued to Sue and Oliver, her elderly churchwardens, twelve hours later, at their weekly meeting round the vicarage kitchen table, “should be banned. It should be a crime to play it. What else has he recorded? ‘Valentine’s Day Is Just to Sell Cards’? ‘Look Out for Wasps, It’s Summer’? Radio stations only play it because it’s got that nice bit with the jingle bells, but he’s doing that sarcastically. He’s doing sarcastic jingle bells.”

  “I did like him in Crosby, Stills and Nash,” opined Oliver, who knew what he meant.

  “Wow,” said Sue. “We’re still two weeks out. And you’re already that far gone.”

  Lizzie realised the two of them were l
ooking at her with newfound wariness. This was going to be her first Christmas as vicar of St. Martin’s church, Lychford. The churchwardens, however, had a long experience of working with her predecessor. All vicars had a rough time of it at Christmas, but she was obviously setting off their alarm bells already. “Chris de Burgh can sod off as well,” she said. “And I liked The Pogues the first eighty-nine times, but come on. Anyway, why are we talking about this? We’ve got a lot to do. Can we please get on?”

  * * *

  They did indeed have a lot to do. Lizzie most of all. She’d expected to feel daunted. She’d spent the year trying to attract new members into the congregation, and Christmas was traditionally the time when a whole bunch of people who wouldn’t otherwise cross the threshold of a church came piling in. The challenge was to somehow keep them afterwards, while running an ecclesiastical assault course. She’d already gotten over the first few hurdles of the season. The Advent Carol Service, which she’d insisted that this year was going to be by candlelight—despite Oliver’s misgivings that this would result in what he called a “Towering Inferno scenario”—had turned out to actually be problematic in other ways. Lizzie had had to lead the plainsong while not being able to see anything. The congregation attracted by the poster hadn’t really sung along, and, as they filed out, Lizzie found them to be a bit bemused that the songs they’d just awkwardly picked their way through were what the Anglican Communion regarded as “carols.” “I like ‘Silent Night,’” one young woman had said, “but perhaps that’s a bit too popular for you.” Lizzie had nearly replied there was a little number by Greg Lake she’d probably enjoy.

  Then there had been Christingle, which had meant more fire—and this time children were handling it—and which brought in very few people who understood why there were oranges with candles stuck in them. At times, Lizzie had wondered if the best way to deal with the added numbers might be some sort of video prologue. “Previously, in Christianity . . .”