Matthew raced back into the house and up into Rose’s bedroom. Dropping to his knees, he jammed his hand beneath his daughter’s dressing table. Please God let it still be here… Yes! He exalted as his fingers connected with a cold, hard shape. Breathing a prayer of thanks, Matthew ran back to the summerhouse as a long, eerie moaning tore into the storm-wracked day.
‘Rose!’ Matthew howled his daughter’s name.
Lightning flashed bright against the sky and, prising the door open, Matthew had time to roll the small black stone inside before the icy wind whipped the door from his grip. It banged shut.
Matthew yearned to howl his frustration. Gathering his strength, he kicked the door of the summerhouse down. Trees grated incessantly, banging against the roof as the winter storm increased its intensity.
Inside, the obsidian stone lay free, surrounded by splintered wood. In the centre of the summerhouse, Gimbal lay curled into a ball on the wooden floor. His eyes were tightly shut, and his body rose and fell as though the faery was deep asleep. Opposite, Rose was seated on the floor in the corner, her long hair draped down across her face and her arms were wrapped tightly around her legs.
In the silence, Matthew retrieved the obsidian stone from off the floor and warily handed it to his daughter. ‘Wear this,’ he commanded roughly. ‘Always. Do not take it off, ever. It will keep you safe.’
She did not respond. Gimbal opened one eye.
‘Take it!’
Rose gazed up at him through eyes that still held a deep, unearthly glow. ‘What is happening to me?’ she whispered.
Her face was delicate, beautiful but softer, Matthew realised. Not as proud as his mother’s was. But still, he could not deny it. The blood link, the resemblence to his witch-mother was clear for all to see.
‘Dad, please, tell me what’s happening.’
Matthew hesitated as his centuries-long hatred of witches, harpies, followers of evil, rose like bile in his throat.
‘Dad…’ Silently, Rose began to cry. Without another word, she took the obsidian stone and buried her face in her hands.
Oh Lord, Matthew clenched his fist. Help me now. Help me find the words to reveal the truth to my daughter. His breath felt jagged and raw in his throat, clutching a lifetime of secrets and silence that waited to be wrenched into the light.
‘Rosalind,’ he began. ‘Listen carefully and do not interrupt.’
✽✽✽
Afterwards, with the storm still shaking the house, Rose sat in the kitchen, leaning against the back of the chair. Her hand cradled a mug of milky, honey-sweetened tea. She could feel the shape of the stone in the pocket of her hoodie.
Firelight from the stove illuminated the lines in her father’s face.
How old is he? She wondered. She couldn’t even imagine. Behind him, shadows danced as a burning log fell, and sparks burst against the glass of the fire. From the hallway outside, a series of chimes marked the hour passed.
Slowly, she traced a finger down her arm, and watched as the muscles and tendons flexed. I am a monster…an abomination, she mused. Her hand clenched. Clawlike. Frightened, Rose pulled it back within the sleeve of her hoodie.
Outside, the tops of the trees lashed against a sky as dull and grey as the dead. She glanced at her father. And he wishes to die. My father wishes to die but can’t, for he carries the curse of endless years in his blood. How old is he? She wondered again.
Rose dug her fingernail into her arms, again not enough to draw blood, but the sharp pain was a relief somehow. And I’m a freakin’ monster.
Matthew turned to her. ‘Rosalind. Do not give in to despair. The Lord has not abandoned us. For is it not written, that at the End Times, the faithful will rise, full in body to meet Him? There is hope. We will rise. We will be free. We can ensure it will happen.’
Matthew watched his daughter closely. Her face was pale, and her golden eyes were dull with fear. ‘Listen carefully, Rose - the end of the forest heralds the beginning of our salvation.’
‘But Dad,’ her voice cracked, as though she hadn’t spoken in a long time. ‘Ellie won’t let it happen.’
‘Ellie?’ Matthew barked out a laugh of surprise. ‘Why do you speak of Ellie? What has your mindless little friend to do with anything?’
Rose looked up. ‘She will never let the forest die. She’s met that … that thing, your mother … that monster -’ Rose closed her eyes as a wave of revulsion roiled through her stomach. ‘She’s been meeting with her in the forest. Ellie didn't say her name, but I know who she means now.’
Turning, she looked out of the window. ‘Dad, Ellie sees her all the time. She’s learning from her. Ellie loves the forest, she loves it more than her family, more than God, more than anything.’ Rose lifted up her hand, and gazing at it, she slowly flexed it. ‘They will fight us. Your mother and my best friend, they’ll fight us together. They won’t give up.’
Leaning over the table, Matthew gripped his daughter’s hand. It felt so delicate, each finger bone so fragile, so fine, it would snap if he held it any tighter.
‘Neither shall we, Rosalind.’ He said firmly. ‘We will not give up. The witches will not win.’ He spat the word out. ‘Our lives, our very souls are at stake. We have the Lord, we have the angels and we have the prophecy on our side. Do not despair. Our success is foretold. The forest, and the earth will die, and die quickly. It will happen. It has to - for it is the only way we can be free.’
TWENTY-TWO
The sun was barely over the horizon when Ellie stepped off her bike, stones cracking underfoot. Shaking out her hands, she blew over them quickly, trying to warm her bare fingers in the freezing air. It didn't help. Shivering, she shoved them back into her jacket pockets and glanced back. Ice fell from the sky. Behind her lay miles of exposed gorse and wind-swept trees.
Ellie hesitated. She may be a Soul Flyer and all that, but she needed to be able to talk, walk, and act. For that, she needed to be in the flesh. She grimaced; flying was much easier.
Up ahead, somewhere further beyond this twisting foliage, lay the highest cliffs in the area, unfenced against a sudden, terrifying drop.
She shouldn’t be here. She’d promised her mother.
Ellie gripped the handlebars. She was way out of bounds, and the expanse of high, wild scrubland lay desolate with not a mark of civilisation - no signs, no houses, no roads.
An urgent impatience tugged from her bag.
‘Okay, okay,’ Ellie muttered, and heaving the front wheel forward, she pushed further into the bank of dense, silent trees.
The path was narrow, twisting its way through the bush. It was more like an animal track than anything constructed for people. Ellie inched her way forward. A twig scraped her cheek as her feet crunched on the ice-covered ground.
Hurry…
‘This is mad, why would anything be here?’ she muttered. But a few moments later as Ellie pushed the bike through the last stand of wizened, low growing trees, she saw it.
Nestled by an outcrop of granite, and painted such a soft dove grey it seemed to waver in the muted light, the wooden cottage was almost imperceptible against the dull, cloud-covered sky. Shivering, Ellie pulled her coat tighter.
Maybe no one was home? She wondered, caught by a sudden shyness. She half hoped so, then she could just turn around home and no one would ever know she’d snuck away.
But no, plumes of very real smoke rose from the solid brick chimney.
Heaving her bike to the ground, Ellie slung her bag over her shoulder and headed towards the cottage. As she hit the first step, a shape toppled to the ground, clattering loudly as it hit the wood. Ellie froze. Around her, balanced precariously on the rickety stairs, were slender towers of smooth round stones. They were quite beautiful, Ellie decided as she inched past. Each one a different size and shape, but if she knocked any, they’d all topple, rattling loudly down the stairs like the fall of ninepins.
Like it’s all booby trapped, Ellie thought, stepping onto the porch. Swi
ftly, she ducked her head to avoid being hit by a string of cylindrical shapes. The contraptions were everywhere. Hanging about head height, they emitted a light tuneless whistle as they spun haphazardly in the wind.
Carefully weaving between them, Ellie made it to the front door without mishap. A stone gargoyle leant insolently against the wood. She stopped, aware of the fierce racing of her heart. Hadn’t it been in a different pose a second ago? ‘Oh God’, she whispered and her breath steamed into the frigid air. ‘What is this place?’
Hurry.
‘Okay,’ muttered Ellie, and lifted her gloved hand to knock.
The door opened before she made a sound, and Ba Set stood at the threshold.
‘Hello?’ began Ellie.
The old woman gestured for Ellie to enter as the shrill whistle of a kettle filled the air.
Bending low so she didn't bang her head, Ellie stepped straight into a tiny room. In the corner a fire blazed, illuminating a wide picture window overlooking the tree-covered valley below. Heaped on the mantelpiece, and on every surface of the room, were strange little sculptures and piles of curiosities - glinting stones, heaped feathers, and oddly shaped seed pods. On the floor by the fire, a fan of delicate bones lay drying in the air.
Crockery jangled, and Ba Set appeared bearing a teapot and a plate of biscuits on a tray. Settling herself on the sofa, she poured out a rich steaming brew, and gestured for Ellie to sit beside her. They sipped their tea in silence. It was spicy, sweet and hot.
‘I had to come,’ Ellie set her cup awkwardly on the floor. ‘It was this,’ she reached into her bag. ‘It showed me how to find you.’
As she held it, the hag stone gave off slight tremors, flinging out small, surprising shocks of electricity.
‘It was insisting, over and over, that we come and find you. God … what’s happening?’ Ellie closed her eyes, remembering her anxious ride through the
icy, pre-dawn streets. ‘This,’ she gestured, suddenly to the open fire, and the frightening coldness outside. ‘I mean, I know it’s almost winter, but this change is just insane.’
She gazed straight into Ba Set’s golden eyes. ‘And another thing - I know what’s happening. I’ve seen it. I’ve been flying - they’ve shown me, the spirits, or whatever they are.’
Ba Set said nothing, but she held herself still and listened, her very being taut.
‘It’s dying. It’s all dying.’ Ellie caught her breath as a tide of grief and despair threatened to submerge her. ‘The drought was bad enough, but this weird, extreme cold, it’s killing everything.’ Her voice trailed off. ‘We need rain,’ she said quietly. ‘Warm, clean rain, it would at least give us all a little time. Can you make it rain? Can you?’
Ba Set took another sip of tea and lay down her cup. She reached for the hag stone, and traced her finger around its glowing centre. ‘What you seek is something that requires great skill,’ she said after a moment, and her voice shook. ‘Weather working is a great and rare talent. Now, one of the rarest of them all. In the old days, every village had its healers, its weavers of magic, but only the most fortunate had the ones who could call the breeze, master the storm, shape the very weather itself.’
Ba Set closed her eyes. ‘But the talents were snuffed out when we died by the thousands in the fires. Witches they called us. Their priests declared us evil and so we were hunted almost to extinction.’ She shuddered. ‘Those of us who survived scattered to the four winds, and the secrets we keep are carefully guarded. We do not share what we know easily. I am sorry. Ellie, the talent you seek is outside my knowledge. And child, it is true what you are saying. The forest is dying, as is the earth herself.’
Ba Set’s gaze shifted past Ellie to the window. ‘The signs are clear to any that have the eyes to see. And it is up to me, and to those like me, to ease Her passing. To prepare, and midwife this forest, this land, this world, on into the next life.’
‘What next life?’ cried Ellie. She didn't quite understand what Ba Set meant, but she could see the fatalism etched on every line and plane of the old woman’s face. ‘And on what planet? This is all there is. If the forests die, we all die!’
‘Ellie, calm yourself; it is all we can do. Sing the last Songs, and prepare ourselves.’
‘No!’ Ellie snapped, she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘This is the Mother you said so yourself. My God, everyone is just giving up, or else saying ‘bring it on.’ Come on, please, Ba Set, you must know someone who can help!’
‘I cannot help you. We all have different talents and mine,’ Ba Set’s eyes flashed proudly. ‘My talent was to fly free and Sing the truth of the earth. Sing Her alive, and I have been doing that for a long, long time.’
‘But you said the earth is dying,’ interrupted Ellie bitterly.
‘And so the Wheel turns, and we too are dying, dying out. We used to gather and meet by the dark and light of the moon, we would sing and dance and honour the gods, the spirits and the cycles of life, death, winter, summer. But that stopped. The one god religions came to dominate, to burn, to destroy.’ Ba Set spat the words out. ‘We had to hide,’ she snarled, rising to her feet. ‘We had to deny who we were. We were hunted and killed and our very existence ground to disbelief.’
She shuddered. ‘So few of us remain.’
Silence filled the room, bitter and acrid. Ba Set turned and walked to the window.
‘There were weather workers, Ellie,’ she said quietly. ‘But they were so short-lived, a single life span quickly snuffed out. Unlike us. My family, we go on and on, and what knowledge we have we pass onto our daughters and so the line continues down the centuries, but in my case it stopped with my son. The magic died.’
Ellie looked up. ‘You have a son? Where?’
Ba Set, lost in reverie, didn't answer. ‘We, blessed with the longest lives, can have only one child, it keeps the balance I suppose, but I never had a daughter to train. And then you came. Ellie, you are rare indeed. I knew from the moment I saw you in the forest, kicking the stones in anger, power ricocheting off you in great streams.’
She turned from the window and regarded Ellie steadily, her small dark form silhouetted against the grey light of the day.
‘You are born out of the line, but you are one of us, that is certain.’ Ba Set nodded. ‘Perhaps those who died in the fires are being reborn in this time of great peril for a reason. But it’s too slow, the Mother will die before enough of us can gather to save her, so I fly and ease the pain of her passing.’
‘Don’t give up, please,’ begged Ellie. Everything the old woman was saying was so strange. ‘Look, Ba Set, please. If I’m one of the ones that’s been reborn, or whatever, well, I wasn’t born to just watch it all die, was I? It doesn't make sense. Come on. Think. What about in other places? There has to be others like us in the whole world. Don’t you talk to them? Isn’t there some kind of social media group or something?’ Ellie laughed, suddenly almost hysterical. ‘Don’t you just hang out and chat?’
Ba Set watched, her lined face impassive, then abruptly she seemed to crumple, exhaustion etching out each and every one of her years. She turned back from the window and eased herself onto the sofa.
‘I am tired, young Soul Flyer,’ she said, taking Ellie’s hand in hers. ‘I work with others, yes, they are powerful, but they are not what you seek. And all I can do is tell you what I know. But you, you have the hag stone. It is the only one of its kind in all of existence. It stayed with me for hundreds of years and then it left me for you. If you wish to help, Ellie, now is the time. The stone led you to me. And I say ask the stone and let it take you to where you need to go. Do it now.’
Ellie swallowed. Ask the stone? But she didn't know how or what even to ask?
Rising to her feet, Ba Set pulled the curtain across the window, shutting out the morning, dropping the room into shadow.
Ellie hesitated. Okay, she thought, now is the time. Taking a deep breath, she lay herself down on the sofa.
Ba Set sa
t by her feet. ‘Concentrate,’ she said firmly, ‘breathe to the earth, ask the stone and you’ll know what to do.’ The old woman closed her eyes.
Panic flared and Ellie fought the urge to run out of the cottage and back to the safety of home. No, she clenched her fists; she was the only one who could do this.
Settling the hag stone on her belly, she could see its faint outline of luminous blue, pulsating gently from its centre as she breathed. Ask the stone what?
Ellie felt stupid and self-conscious, and quite alone in this little room with only the glow of the embers for company. At the end of the sofa, Ba Set was so still she seemed like a rock, or a carving.
But what if nothing happened, what if it didn't work? Ellie shifted her body, trying to straighten out her legs without disturbing the old woman. She shook her head; she could at least try, something, anything. Quietly, Ellie breathed out a soft, experimental sound.
Pathetic, more like a croak than a note. But, barely perceptibly, and Ellie thought she may be just imagining it, the light from within the stone seemed to brighten in response.
Encouraged, Ellie sang another note, this time imagining herself with a line connecting her down into the earth. The stone on her belly shimmered and pulsed with heat. Ellie stared elated, and abruptly she knew what she had to ask.
‘Help me,’ she whispered. ‘I know it sounds nuts. But I need to save the earth. And I need help. A weather worker…’ Can you help me find a weather worker?
A tone rose out of Ellie’s being, as if by its own volition. Becoming louder, it surged into the dark and an eye-dazzling brightness flared out from the centre of the hag stone.
Ellie didn't quite understand how it happened, but she simply stood up and stepped out of the confines of her body. With the hag stone tightly in one hand and her arms raised, she leapt high up into the vast emptiness encircling the earth.
Later, Ellie could only remember it in snatches of sensation, like the tantalising wisps of a dream.
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