The Return of the Witch Read online

  Then, one spring day, when I had been on the island many months and was weathered and lean and a little blistered and aching but spry, and comfortable with the pattern of my solitary existence, I rounded a corner on the west-facing rocks and found I had a visitor. The shock of seeing another person just standing there, as if parachuted in, watching me, calm as you like … I screamed. I remember that quite clearly. I shrieked in a really girly, uncool way. Things got quickly weirder and weirder. This uninvited guest was an old man, I mean a seriously old man. Beyond grandad sort of age, more of your biblical whiskery type, a bit scrawny, shorter than me, with an impressive beard. So I was trying to make sense of anyone being there at all, let alone someone who looked like he’d need help getting up a flight of stairs never mind scaling the path that climbed from the shore to the cliff top, and trying to find something sensible to say and he just kept smiling at me, all unexpectedly good teeth and happy wrinkles. And that made me think he might be a little bit bonkers, which made it all the more strange that he had managed to get to Craig y Duw and, anyway, where was his boat? Or microlight? Or whatever the hell he had used to get there? And OK, it was a warm, sunny day, but he wasn’t wearing decent outdoor clothing or hiking shoes, just a grubby Rolling Stones T-shirt, cutoff shorts, and cheap-looking trainers. He looked like some thrift store Robinson bloody Crusoe. He must have got fed up waiting for me to speak, because he just turned around and began striding away along the cliff path, and then shouted back over his shoulder,

  “Come on. Hurry up. We don’t have much time.”

  I scrambled after him. “Wait! What d’you mean? And anyway, who are you? How did you get here?” For someone so ancient he moved pretty fast, so that I had to trot to keep up.

  “Do you always ask so many questions?” He spoke without breaking his stride.

  “What? No. I mean, I wasn’t expecting you. It‘s not like I’m on a bus route here.”

  “You are easy enough to find.”

  “Were you looking for me, then? Not just … coming to the island?” I tripped over a stone and cursed, hobbling on with a painful ankle. “Could you slow down a minute, please? Could we just stop and talk…”

  “No time! No time,” he called back in his singsongy voice, striding out and clearly expecting me to follow without even knowing his name.

  And the odd thing is, I did. I wanted to. I had to. Not just out of curiosity, or because I was surprised by him being there, or because I thought I deserved an explanation. I knew, just knew that I should follow him, go wherever he led me. We walked to the farthest point of the island from my camp, so that we were on the northeast point. From there it wasn’t possible to see the Welsh coast, so all you looked out over was the wide, flat, sea, with the low sun bouncing off its silky grey-blue surface. There were no bird’s nests this side, so the only sound came from the waves, hundreds of feet below, breaking softly over the iron-grey rocks.

  The old man chose a flat rock a couple of strides in from the cliff edge and sat cross-legged on it, looking out to sea. “Sit,” he said, patting the space beside him. I did as I was told, and we stayed like that for a while, him saying nothing, me not asking all the questions I was bursting with. Right then I had two theories. He was either a nutter, or he was someone really important. It could have gone either way. I waited. Still he said nothing, just took a tobacco pouch from one pocket and a battered pipe from the other. He filled the bowl of the thing with great care and concentration, tamping it down to perfection before lighting it. The smoke was whipped away by the warm spring breeze, but I caught a whiff of tarry liquorice and spice. I was determined I wouldn’t break, wouldn’t give in to my maddening curiosity. He’d come looking for me, he’d said. Well, now he had found me. Let him explain himself.

  “There was once a Druid went by the name of Gwynfor,” he informed me.

  Not the conversation I’d been expecting, but at least he was talking.

  “He lived a league or two up the coast from here.” He waved his arm vaguely northward. “He was a learned man, respected, held in high esteem, you might say. He officiated at ceremonies with great dignity, upheld the Druidic laws, and gave counsel to those who traveled to sit at his feet, bringing their problems to him for a solution.”

  “Sounds … great,” I said uncertainly.

  “Trouble was,” he went on, “Gwynfor was not a true believer.”

  “He wasn’t?”

  “Oh, he knew all he had to know, could recite creeds and prayers and so forth and so on until the cows came home. And, had you asked him, he would have told you he believed in the divine ruler with all his heart and all his mind and all his soul. But…” Here the old man paused, puffing deeply on his pipe, eyes half closed, lost in thought.

  “But?…” I tried to nudge him on with his story.

  “He didn’t believe in himself.”

  “Oh.”

  More silence followed. A seagull soared past on its way to the southern nesting sites.

  The old man shook his head. “All that knowledge, all that learning, all that wisdom, and he couldn’t see how he fitted into it. He was nothing more than a walking library, a collection of information for others to come and pick and choose from whenever they wanted. He missed the whole point of it all. Missed the true value of the gifts he had been blessed with.”

  “He did?”

  “He couldn’t see that he wasn’t simply a keeper of that learning, he was that learning. Himself. You could no more separate it from him or him from it than you could snatch the reflection of the moon from the surface of a pond.”

  He turned to look at me then, nodding slowly as if he had explained everything perfectly clearly and I was supposed to understand. But I didn’t. Not really. Not until he asked, “And how about you, Tegan? Are you just a store cupboard for all that you have learned, or have you become all that you have learned?”

  The intensity of his gaze was unnerving.

  “How did you know I was here?” I asked at last, unable to hold back from questioning him any longer. “And why did you come? And how did you get here? I didn’t hear a boat…”

  He stood up and stepped closer to the cliff top. I instinctively got to my feet and followed him. He looked so flimsy I was worried he might just teeter over the edge. He didn’t seem at all bothered by being only inches from falling to certain death. He wasn’t even looking at the crumbly bit of path he was standing on. He was still looking at me.

  “There is such a magic inside of you, Tegan. Your breath carries magic onto the zephyr, your pores ooze magic onto your skin, your soul thrums with magic, indeed, your very bones vibrate with it. And still you do not believe, not in yourself. It is up to you to accept the gifts given you, child. It is up to you to revel in your own unique power. And when you do, when that moment of epiphany comes, you will be all that you can be. You will be Tegan Hedfan—The Fair One Who Flies.”

  “But, I…”

  I never finished that sentence. With a strength and a speed I could not have believed the old man capable of, he stepped forward and, in one determined movement, pushed me off the top of the cliff.

  And I fell.

  And as I fell thoughts tumbled through my mind—questions, curses, prayers, cries of regret and panic and fear and sadness, all jumbled and whirling in the blink of an eye. And all the while I fell, faster and faster, the sharp granite cliffs flashing past me or me flashing past them; me hurtling toward the cruel rocks or them rushing up to meet me. Either seemed possible in that terrifying moment. All good sense, all ideas of the way things should be, or how the day was meant to go, or what fate had written for me, all that fell away to nothing as I fell toward my death. And I heard the shaman I had trekked across Siberia to find chanting. And I heard the Hoodoo witch from Louisiana laughing. And I heard my sister witches from the four corners of the earth calling my name. And above it all I heard one clear, strong voice, and she uttered just one single word.

  Fly!

  And I thought
of Elizabeth, and of how she had taken my hand and led me up into the night sky and together we had soared aloft, swooping and diving and climbing and gliding.

  And I flew.

  And when finally I landed back on the cliff top, the old man was gone.

  3

  Over the following days we were able to fully turn our attention to our defenses. The moon was waxing as we neared the end of the month. Although the spring equinox was still some weeks off, and despite the snow, there was a sense of spring, of burgeoning life, of renewal and growth. It was a fitting time to make an offering to the Goddess and ask for her protection. In the kitchen, we assembled the items that would form part of our ritual, such as candles, incense water from the sacred pool, sprigs of thyme and lavender, and a small square of silk. We waited until the dark of night had cloaked the village entirely. In the garden to the rear of the cottage was my altar, formed of hedge and stone and spring, where Tegan had once before seen Gideon’s true nature reflected in the water. As we lit our ceremonial white candles the cold air made the flames pulsate, casting their own tiny dancing shadows. I looked into the flames and thought of the fire in Batchcombe Woods that night five years ago. Had it been daytime, from the top of the low hill behind the house we could have seen the treetops of that forest, seemingly undisturbed by what had happened, though there would still be some trees that bore the scars of the blaze. The air was perfumed by the oily incense. Tegan began reciting the prayer to the Goddess, imploring her to lend us her strength, to warn us of danger, to shield us with her steadfast love. As she spoke I crumbled the herbs into the center of the silk, folded its edges inward, and then set its corner to the candle flame. The fabric spat and flared, and as it burned I dropped it into the pool.

  “Bless us with your wisdom,” I called gently. “Arm us with your power. Show us what we must guard against.”

  We leaned forward together and peered into the pool. The surface rippled and blotched as it swallowed up the dying embers and ash of the offering. The glossy water at first merely reflected the moon’s fading light, but then it altered, becoming first a rosy pink, then a hot orange and, lastly, a vivid scarlet. This redness, startling and bright, did not sit upon the water smoothly, but caused it to boil and bubble as if great heat were being applied beneath it. I gasped as a rancid odor burst up in the steam the bubbles gave off. Tegan and I staggered backward, recoiling from the smell, not wanting to inhale the noxious fumes. She turned to me, unable to stop herself saying what we both felt.

  “He’s close, and he means us both harm. In fact, I’d say he means us both dead. Well, I guess we asked,” she added with an attempt at lightheartedness that was not entirely successful.

  Neither of us wanted to speak again of what had been revealed to us that night, though we were both all too aware of its significance. What was there to say? Gideon’s shadow preceded him. It fell upon us even in the brightest sunlight, or under the soft cloak of night’s darkness. The threat of his presence was a constant in our lives. It was, after all, why we had asked the Goddess for her help. It was why we did not venture out alone. It was why the slightest sound would rouse me from my sleep. It was why Tegan kept her beloved carved wooden staff close at hand wherever she went. Two days later we worked in the kitchen all day, turning the last of the winter store of apples into chutney. It was a peaceful, undemanding task, the rewards of which we would enjoy over the coming months. At the end of our labors the room still smelled strongly of vinegar and spices, so we repaired to the small sitting room at the front of the house for the evening. Tegan lit a fire and we sat in the shabby but comfortable armchairs, sipping mugs of parsnip soup. I looked at her in the flickering light of the flames and could not help but notice the dark circles beneath her eyes and the pallor of her soft young skin.

  “You look tired,” I said. “Let me give you something to help you sleep tonight.”

  Tegan shook her head. “I’m fine.” Aloysius came to sit on the arm of her chair and nibbled at a small pile of breadcrumbs put there for him.

  “You need proper rest, if…”

  “If Gideon comes?” She stared into the fire. “It’s not if, is it? When Gideon comes. I’ll be ready for him.”

  “We will be ready for him.”

  “Tomorrow we should smudge all the rooms again. Sage and rosemary.”

  “If you like.”

  “And I’m thinking of getting a dog.”

  “A dog?”

  “A big one. Best security system there is.”

  I sipped my soup. “I’m not sure what Aloysius would think of that.”

  “Or maybe two dogs,” she went on, ignoring my remark. “Yes, a pair would be better, don’t you think?”

  Suddenly a heaviness beset me. What we had been shown in the woods, the warning we had been given, was brutally clear. He was coming, and we would not be able to withstand him. All the planning, all the spells and dogs in the county would not keep him away. He was coming for Tegan and was no longer confident of my ability to protect her. I put down my mug and leaned forward.

  “You know, I think we should change our plans.”

  “Change them?”

  “Yes. Tegan, I think you should leave.”

  Now she looked at me. “I can’t believe you’re even suggesting that!”

  “You saw the omen. You know what it means.”

  “I know what he will try to do. Doesn’t mean he’s going to succeed.”

  “But he is so powerful, Tegan. Power is everything to him. He has spent his long, dark life chasing it, not caring who he tramples in his wish to be stronger, greater, more dangerous than any other witch.”

  “You are powerful, too.”

  “I couldn’t keep him prisoner, not even with the help of my sisters. We don’t know who is helping him. We don’t know what we are facing.”

  “No, I’m not going anywhere. I’m not some silly little girl playing with herbs and party magic, Elizabeth. I can look after myself.”

  “Tegan…”

  “I am not running!” She sprang to her feet. “I am not going to spend my life being hunted by him, like…” She hesitated.

  I finished the sentence for her. “Like I was.”

  “I won’t run,” she told me, with a determination that made me both proud of her and afraid for her. “I won’t. I … I know I can face him this time, Elizabeth. I’m not sure how, some of my magic, well, I haven’t had a chance to try it. If you’d asked me only a few weeks ago, a few days ago, I’d have said I wasn’t ready. I truly don’t know what I can do with it all yet, but, hey, looks like I’m going to get a chance to find out.”

  I chose my words carefully. I recalled the quality of the magic I had felt when I’d touched Tegan’s hand in the kitchen. “Tegan, I know you are … changed.”

  “That is what I’ve been trying to get you to understand…”

  “But, as you said yourself, much of your magic is new to you. Untried and untested.”

  “I know.”

  “And when using any new magic skill, there are risks. Risks of failure, risks that the magic might cause injury, not to the person it is aimed at but to the one using it.”

  “I know that, too!” she shouted, then closed her eyes briefly. “I’m sorry. Let’s not fight about it.” She paused, then tried an unconvincing smile. “It’s late. I’m going to bed.”

  “Let’s talk about it more in the morning.”

  “There’s nothing more to say,” she told me as she scooped up Aloysius and left the room. “I am not going to run.”

  I sat for a while, gathering my thoughts. She could be so very stubborn! Could she not see how dangerous her situation was? Surely it would be better if she left, took herself out of harm’s way, perhaps to visit one of the witches with whom she had studied and spent time, somewhere distant. Somewhere safe. And yet, at the same time, I admired her courage. It had taken me a dozen lifetimes to find the strength to stand and face Gideon. And, after all, was it not for her that I ha
d, ultimately done so? I knew in my heart that she would not be persuaded to run. I had no option but to simply do more to protect her.

  Even as I formed this thought I felt a sickening chill descend upon me. Outside a wind had got up, and now it moaned down the chimney, sending smoke into the room. As I watched, the smoke appeared to pulsate and to move in an unnatural manner, as if it were trying to take on a form, to become something. The temperature of the air about me dropped dramatically. I experienced a great pressure upon my chest, so that I was compelled to struggle for breath and feared I might have the very life pressed from me. Not without difficulty I rose, holding my hands out in front of me, calling upon the Goddess to help me drive this wickedness from my home.