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Who are you trying to convince, Mum? Us, or yourself?
Her mother sighed.
‘I’m sorry I overreacted. I just – I have to keep you safe, that’s all. I want you both at home as much as possible until this is all sorted out. Especially you, Merry. And – the woods are completely off-limits from now on.’ She paused. ‘They’re lonely enough at the best of times. Understood?’
‘Sure, Mum.’ Leo nodded.
Merry said nothing.
Merry spent the next few days avoiding her mother and trying to not obsessively check the parchment from the trinket box. The Manuscript, Gran had called it; she claimed it would provide guidance, but obviously no one had ever actually seen it working. So far there was no writing visible. Gran told her to be patient, that the breakdown of the sleeping spell and the activation of the oath was a process. But the waiting, the uncertainty, was like the barrel of a gun in her back. Even a couple of drop-in sessions at the local fencing club – suddenly, improved sword skills felt like a potential necessity – didn’t help much. It was nearly two years since she’d last fought, and while she was there the mental discipline required cleared her mind. But the effect soon wore off, and her thoughts swung back into the same groove: endless worrying about what was going to happen next.
By Sunday of the next weekend the parchment was still blank. Merry spent the day in a flutter of suppressed excitement. She tried to ignore the whisper in the back of her mind – the hope – that somehow, Gran had got everything wrong. That the continuing attacks in Tillingham – another couple had been found, almost dead, just two days earlier – were really nothing to do with their family history. That the boy in her room had just been a coincidence, or a shared hallucination from the experimental vegetable stir-fry she’d made for dinner that evening. She tried to crush her growing optimism, but it was impossible.
On Sunday night she slept really well for the first time in ages: no visions or dreams, no strange noises, no fit but clearly dangerous boys barging into her bedroom. On Monday morning she hummed as she got ready for school, and began to at least contemplate making plans for the following weekend. There was a party on the Friday, then there was a new sci-fi film coming out she wanted to see. Ruby wouldn’t be interested, but Jamie, a guy from her history class who had a ridiculously cute smile, might go with her – he’d asked her on a date once, before. She grabbed her school bag. Below it was one edge of the trinket box, sticking out from under her bed.
Maybe I should take another look, just to prove to myself that nothing has changed.
She picked up the box, lifted the lid and took a peek at the parchment.
The box slipped out of her hands and thudded on to the floor.
Merry went to school. She didn’t know what else to do. But she felt like she was separated from everything going on around her by a thick sheet of bubble wrap: she could hear and see the students and teachers, but nothing they said to her made any sense. A low point came when she found she’d said yes to going on a date with Mark Taylor, a smug Year 13 muppet who didn’t seem to be able to take no for an answer. But even after Ruby had finally made her understand what had happened, she didn’t really care. None of it seemed important any more.
Leo picked her up as arranged. The smile slid off his face as she got into the passenger seat. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I looked in the box again this morning.’ Merry reached for it and realised her hands were shaking.
Leo leant over and pulled it out of her bag. ‘Key?’
‘Front pocket.’
He opened the box, took out the parchment and read it. ‘This is it then.’ He put his hands on the steering wheel, and Merry saw that his knuckles were white. ‘It’s started.’
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They were in the kitchen. Mum wasn’t back from work yet. Merry was curled up on the old sofa, a crocheted patchwork blanket round her shoulders, holding the small glass of brandy Leo had poured for her. Leo was sitting at the big oak table, the parchment – manuscript – whatever it was, spread out in front of him.
‘So, this word—’ he tapped the manuscript.
Eala.
That was all it said. Four handwritten, angular letters, in dark brown ink.
Leo was looking at his laptop screen now.
‘The top listings for “Eala” are EA Los Angeles, whatever that is, East African Legislative Assembly, and the European Air Law Association. I somehow doubt any of those are relevant, but—’
‘It must be something in Anglo-Saxon.’ Merry took another sip of brandy, grimacing as the fumes hit the back of her throat.
‘Er, yeah. I was just about to say that.’ Leo tapped on the keyboard a bit more. ‘OK, here’s an Old English translator. I’ll just—’
Merry had a sudden vision: she was standing on a high peak, surrounded by the blackness of space, and if she took one more step forwards she would fall away from everything she had ever known –
‘Leo – wait!’
Leo paused, his fingers poised above the keys.
‘What? Why?’
‘Because – I – I need more time.’
Leo sat back in his chair, his arms crossed.
‘Merry … we don’t know how much time you – we – have. Nobody’s died yet, but,’ he sighed, ‘how long until things get even more dangerous? For you, I mean. Forget everyone else.’
‘I—’ Merry paused, trying to decide how to explain to Leo; what to tell him. ‘I’m just not ready for this. Like I said, I haven’t cast any spells for nearly a year, apart from accidently, and to just launch into something this big …’ She nodded at the manuscript. ‘We don’t know what’s going to happen, once we figure out how to work that thing. I need more training.’
‘No,’ Leo was shaking his head, ‘what you need is to start dealing with this. Now the manuscript’s … working, you don’t have any choice. Wizard Man and Psycho Boy aren’t going to conveniently take a break while you have remedial witchcraft lessons. You said you were at least going to try—’
‘I know what I said!’ Merry stood up and went to pour the rest of the brandy down the sink. Last night she’d really thought this was all going to turn out to be a mistake, that somehow she was going to be let off the hook. But now …
‘And I am going to try.’ She grabbed the manuscript, folded it up and shoved it back into the box. ‘Just not today.’
‘Fine. Well, you let me know when you’re feeling … up for it.’ Leo shook his head again and shut the lid of the laptop. ‘You’d better phone Gran, by the way. Let her know what’s happened.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Merry picked up the box and marched out of the kitchen.
Right now, she needed to be alone.
Merry switched the light on and looked around her room, half-expecting to see the dark-haired girl standing in the corner, wagging her finger and tutting. But the room was empty. She dropped the trinket box on her desk and threw herself on to the bed. What was Leo’s issue, anyway? Sure, she knew he was just trying to help her, would do anything he could to help her; but at the end of the day this was her problem. She was the one who was going to have to try to kill this Gwydion guy. She was the one who was going to have to try to break the curse …
Just thinking about it made her hands shake.
Of course, being frightened of what she was meant to do would have been easier to deal with if she wasn’t also frightened – terrified – of the magic that was meant to help her do it.
Ha. Not going to tell Leo about that though, are you? Or why you’re frightened of it. He doesn’t know what you did …
Oh shut up. It’s not like I actually killed anyone. Alex is still alive.
Maybe it had been a mistake: reacting the way she had done, swearing off witchcraft completely. What if she had a go at a spell now, when she wasn’t under pressure, when there was no one else around to get hurt if things got out of hand? Her power might respond normally again. Merry took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and brought to mind the words of a charm for finding lost things. It was one of the first formal spells she’d learnt – on the quiet, by sneaking a book out of Gran’s study – and it was easy. She’d used to find it easy, at any rate. You mentally pictured the lost thing, said the words and – abracadabra – you’d end up with a new mental picture of where the lost thing was. She tried it now, carefully, calmly, on an earring she’d dropped somewhere in the house about a month ago. Picturing the earring was simple enough: it was long and dangly, five little crystal-set snowflakes with two silver chain-links between each snowflake. And she remembered all the words of the charm: O Sun by day and Moon by night, shine on the thing I seek, a light; guide my steps and light my mind until that missing thing I find …
But her mind – apart from the image of the earring – remained stubbornly blank.
Oh, great. If I’ve managed to break my powers somehow, are Gran and the coven still going to make me go out there, face Gwydion and his King of Hearts –
Something started rattling. Was the earring stuck at the back of a drawer somewhere? Merry had never had a physical indication of the whereabouts of a lost object before, but her magic had been so unpredictable lately … She jumped off the bed to investigate.
It was just the trinket box, twitching on the desk just like it had been doing the night she and Leo found it.
Merry swore at the box, slammed it up and down on the desktop a few times for good measure, wrapped it up in an old blanket and threw it in the bottom of her wardrobe.
No way was she phoning Gran now: she needed to get her head round what was happening, not be pushed into stuff by a box.
And I’m not going to look up what ‘Eala’ means, either.
So there.
But clearly, she was going to have to do something about that damn manuscript eventually.
The solution came to her overnight. She would ask one of the other witches in the coven – one of the official, properly-trained witches – to have a look at the manuscript for her. If another witch could get the manuscript to work, maybe Gran would change her mind, agree to the coven at least trying to deal with Gwydion without her.
But who to ask?
Not Gran, obviously. And she wasn’t allowed to ask Mum. As she stood in the shower washing her hair, Merry ran through the other people she now knew were in the coven – thanks to the rune-casting episode outside the house the other week. Mrs Knox was another definite no. But the Zara girl … Merry turned up the temperature, letting the hot water ricochet off her tight shoulder muscles. Yes: Zara girl was the same age as her, more or less. She would understand. And it wasn’t like Merry was going to use her as human shield or anything – she just wanted a bit of … help.
Merry had a plan – an achievable, concrete plan. For the first time in twenty-four hours, she smiled.
Unfortunately, it turned out not to be that much of a plan.
The Zara girl – whose name, when Merry tracked her down in the Year 13 common room, turned out to be Flo – had been happy to help. Almost enthusiastic. She said her mum wouldn’t talk about Meredith’s oath, or the curse: just dropped lots of dark hints that had driven her wild with curiosity. So Flo had led the way to a music practice room, chatting all the time, and waited while Merry got the manuscript out of her bag. But then …
Then Merry had pointed to the word, Eala. But Flo hadn’t been able to see it. As far as she could tell, the manuscript was just a completely blank piece of paper. And she’d looked at Merry with such a mixture of doubt and pity in her eyes …
Now Merry was back in her bedroom. She’d spent the evening there, having told Mum and Leo – truthfully – that she had a headache. The failure of her plan, the realisation that Gran had been absolutely literal when she said that only a descendent could face Gwydion – made her just want to curl up under her duvet and hide. If she was asleep – even if she was dreaming – at least she didn’t consciously have to think about what lay ahead of her.
Early the next morning, she was woken by the chimes of the grandfather clock on the landing striking seven. That meant it was actually only six-fifteen; the grandfather clock always ran fast, no matter what anybody did to it. She turned over and tried to get back to sleep.
But she couldn’t settle. As well as the annoyingly loud tick of the clock, there was a strange, pungent smell, almost like …
… burning. Something was on fire. Merry threw the bedclothes back and was halfway out of bed when she saw it.
A circle of flat stones – a hearth? – with a pile of logs burning brightly in the centre. In the middle of her bedroom carpet. As she watched, open-mouthed, the grandfather clock began to chime again, marking the half-hour. But the sound faded, as the room around her dissolved into a different place entirely. Almost entirely: Merry was still sitting on her bed, her hand still clutching the edge of the duvet. But the bed itself was now in the corner of – a cottage, she supposed it was. She could see a loom and a rough wooden cupboard against the far wall, just illuminated by the flames from the hearth. And around the hearth were three figures: the same girl Merry had seen at the station and in the mirror – Meredith? – and two others. One, with black hair and a thin, tear-stained face, was perched next to possibly-Meredith on the edge of a wooden bench. The other, tall and blonde, was standing with her hands on her hips, frowning at the weeping girl. None of them seemed to have noticed the sudden appearance of a stranger and a piece of furniture in their midst.
‘… and it’s as well for you we found you before the wolves did,’ the blonde girl was saying. ‘Wandering off like that, without a word to either of us—’
‘Carys, enough.’ Possibly-Meredith put her arm around the black-haired girl. ‘Nia does not mean to do these things; she does not wish to be … troublesome. You know how it is with those who have the Sight.’
‘I’m sorry, Meredith, I really am,’ Nia murmured.
Merry thought: I was right then. That is Meredith. And those must be her sisters.
‘Well …’ Carys sighed and sat down in an empty chair opposite the other two. ‘We need the truth now, Nia. We all of us know something is wrong, out in the wide world, though we haven’t yet spoken of it. What did you see that drove you up into the woods?’
Nia stared into the flames and the woodsmoke, while the logs crackled and spat. Merry could feel the heat on her face.
‘Two nights ago,’ Nia said, ‘I had a dream. There was a woman, a noble woman, I think, rocking a baby in her arms. I knew her, from somewhere. She looked happy, but there was a shadow over the child, and on his forehead the word king, written in blood.’
‘What did the woman look like?’ Carys asked.
‘The woman had brown hair, almost the colour of hazelnuts, and brown eyes, flecked with gold. And then the woman and the baby disappeared, and I saw a man. He was young and handsome, but he was marked with the same word, and he was holding—’ Nia shut her eyes tight, ‘—no – no, I can’t say—’
‘Nia, dear one,’ Meredith took Nia’s hands in hers. ‘We must know what you saw.’
Nia nodded slowly.
‘The man’s hand was red with blood, so much blood that it ran down his arm and soaked the sleeve of his tunic. He opened his fingers, to show me what he held. It was a heart, Meredith. A human heart. And it was still beating.’
Merry blinked as the scene bled and shifted around her.
She was still sitting on her bed, jammed incongruously into the corner of the cottage. The fire still burnt brightly in the hearth. But now Nia was sitting in the chair, strumming idly on a small wooden lyre. Meredith was crouching over a cooking pot that was hanging from an iron tripod above the fire. The cottage door opened and Carys walked in.
Nia’s fingers stumbled over the strings. Meredith dropped the spoon she was holding and stood up. ‘What have you done to yourself?’
Carys’s hair was in tangles, there were cuts on her hands and a long, bloody welt down the side of her face and neck. ‘You must clean those scratches right away. Nia, where is the chickweed ointment? Did we not—’
Nia was still staring at Carys.
‘It is begun, then?’
Carys nodded.
‘What’s begun?’ Meredith was glancing from Nia to Carys. ‘Carys? What’s begun?’
‘Our preparations, Meredith. For dealing with Gwydion. I have been able to find out where he conceals himself.’
‘No …’ Meredith grasped Carys by the shoulders. ‘What have you done? What did you promise, to gain such knowledge?’
Carys held up a hand, silencing her.
‘Do not ask me, Meredith. I was willing to pay the price that was demanded. We promised we would help, if we could.’
‘She’s right, Meredith.’ Nia came and stood next to Carys. ‘We promised. And who will stop Gwydion, if we do nothing?’
The sisters all turned towards Merry, staring at her as if they were noticing her presence for the first time. But they didn’t seem to be surprised.
‘Who will stop Gwydion, if you do nothing, Merry?’ Meredith asked.
‘Yes,’ Carys was nodding and pointing at her. ‘You must act, Merry.’
Nia stepped forwards.
‘Please, Merry. You are running out of time …’
Merry opened her mouth to reply, to explain – I was going to try, but I’m scared, I’m so scared – but before she could speak a soft chiming started up behind her. She turned away from the three girls, trying to work out where in the cottage the noise was coming from …
… and as she turned, she was back in her bedroom. The cottage, the round hearth with its bright fire – everything had disappeared. The grandfather clock finished chiming the half-hour and fell silent.
No time had passed at all.
