The Lost Witch Read online

  And then they were in the town, winding through the wet streets. Even now, in the rain and wind, there were people out and about, in the cafés, blowing down the streets, peering out from the bright windows of the pub on the corner.

  The car turned up the hill towards home. Her mum sometimes said that the best thing about holidays was getting back home, but this time, thought Bea, the best bit had happened before they got there. But what did it mean? Such thoughts, such feelings – such events!

  In bed that night, Bea thought about the hare that spoke and the voice which had visited her from the underground, which had grabbed hold of the night and turned it into living things, for a brief time. What’s wrong with me? she thought. She’d been like a child at the theatre, believing everything she saw. But her family were rebels – atheists, republicans, realists. She knew magic did not and could not exist. It was a shame, but there it was.

  She turned over to go to sleep. She had already started to disbelieve.

  2

  The next day Bea awoke exhausted. She sat up to look out of her window, wishing that the world had changed, but it was the same old view – same rain, same trees, same old Bea. Her phone pinged – a friend asking if she was back. But she was too tired, so she flopped down onto her bed and went back to sleep. She didn’t get downstairs until early afternoon, when the smell of bacon called to her.

  Her parents were in the kitchen with cups of tea and bacon butties. Michael in his high chair waved a soggy rusk at her when she came in, offering her a bite, which she took – just a small piece off a dry corner.

  ‘Crikey, it’s the living dead,’ said her mum. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked, getting up to pass her hand over Bea’s forehead.

  Bea leaned into her. ‘Just tired,’ she said. She put her arms around her mum for a moment, then pulled away, grabbed a butty from the plate in the centre of the table and went over to the window. The sun was flinging a few glistening beams of light down between the clouds onto the wet trees and the road outside.

  She got out her phone and started messaging her friends.

  ‘I wonder if you should have a day in,’ said her mum.

  ‘Mum! I’ve been a virtual prisoner for two weeks!’

  ‘You look so pale. And why are you so tired? You haven’t done anything.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘You could help in the shop,’ said her dad, glancing up. ‘I’ve got loads to do. I could do with a hand.’

  Bea’s dad was a jeweller, a neat, small man who made pieces out of gold and silver and tiny polished stones that would break your heart, they were that pretty. Bea was always amazed that her quiet dad – he was pretty ugly to tell the truth – was the creator of such charming little things.

  ‘Not today, Dad. I want to see my friends,’ she begged.

  He shrugged assent, despite her mum’s pout of disapproval, and Bea went back to her phone. She arranged to meet some friends down the park, reassured her mum by devouring a slice of cake and a banana on top of her butty – no sick person could stomach that lot – before putting on her wellies and raincoat and setting off down the hill.

  The river was high, rubbing its back on the underside of the bridges as she walked down into town. She paused by the weir to watch it hurtling past, enjoying the thunderous rush of brown water and foam. For a moment, she imagined not water rushing past but a stampede of horses storming into town, glistening and shiny with wet, rushing and shoving their way past, full gallop . . .

  Ridiculous! She was annoying herself now. Stop it, Bea, she thought, and hurried on to meet her friends and salvage what was left of the summer.

  * * *

  There wasn’t much going on. Everything was wet and muddy.There was a puddle as big as a small lake on the football pitch. A few kids were out on the skateboard park showing off their tricks while Bea and her friends stood about swapping holiday stories and watching the skaters go through their paces.

  There was a new boy on the ramps a few years older than them. Lars, he was called. He’d fixed some fiery red and orange lights to the underside of his battered old board, which was a cheap trick – but that boy knew how to skate. The board spun and glittered beneath him like an advertisement. He wore shorts and a T-shirt, arms and legs bare despite his daredevil moves, with his red hair up in an Alice band. A total poser, thought Bea. Even so, you couldn’t take your eyes off him. He flew. He made Bea want to fly too.

  The girls were all over him. When he started to offer rides to her friends, they were queuing up. He stood with his feet straddling the board and had them stand between his legs. Then he pushed off, weaving in and out and around the slopes, the chosen girl leaning back into him, squealing and laughing while the older girls stood wryly watching. Bea stood with them, arms folded tightly across her chest. Ridiculous. Pathetic! But when he offered her a go, there she was, grinning like an idiot, running up for her turn.

  Lars got her to step backwards onto the board, then put his arms around her. ‘Use me,’ he whispered. ‘Lean back. I’ll guide you.’

  Bea giggled.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Yes, yes!’

  He pushed off. Bea swayed for a moment in surprise, then relaxed back and pressed into him as he rocked behind her, swerving smoothly around the slopes. And – it was easy! The other girls had been falling all over the place, but Bea was with him on every curve. She was a natural. When it was done she stepped lightly off – the only one who had stayed on till the end.

  The boy grinned. ‘Good girl!’ he said, and turned to the next.

  ‘Like it?’ asked one of the older girls dryly.

  Embarrassed, Bea tossed her head and stalked off. ‘It wasn’t him, it was the board,’ she told her friends. But it had been such fun! Suddenly she was hatching an urge to make a skateboard fly under her feet just as this one did for him.

  Back at home, Bea nagged her parents to get her a skateboard of her own and a couple of days later she was setting out self-consciously with her new toy under her arm and, knee and elbow protectors in place, off to practise in the park. She was as proud as a prince – but when she put it on the ground and jumped up on it, that glimpse of magic she’d had with Lars had vanished. She wobbled, shook and fell to the ground like a leg of lamb.

  She got straight back on, but it was no good. As soon as the board moved, she fell. To make it worse the red-headed boy turned up to watch her. After ten minutes, bruised and humiliated, she was ready to give up. But Lars the poser didn’t sneer or tease.

  ‘You’re actually doing really well,’ he said. ‘It’s the board that’s bad. This thing’ – he flicked his fingers against her shiny new skateboard – ‘it’s sketchy. It talks the talk but it don’t walk the walk. My old thing might look as if it’s seen better days, but it’s got balance. Maybe I’ve got something at home you could try out. Here, look – practise on mine. I’ll pop back home and see what I can find.’

  He was as good as his word. Bea balanced and fell, balanced and flew, balanced and fell for an hour on the borrowed board, and then he was back with his easy smile and his pretty face, and a really ancient old board, even more battered and scratched than his.

  ‘I learned on this,’ he said. ‘Maybe you can too.’

  Every morning for the next few days Bea woke up covered with scrapes and bruises, aching from head to foot. She didn’t care. Lars had taken her under his wing. The rest of the world seemed to fade away. Her mum and dad, her home, her friends all began to feel like events from someone else’s life. And the hares on the moor, that glimpse of another world? Even though she’d thought at the time she would remember it for ever, that faded too. All she wanted to do was skate. She swooped up and down the ramps, spun and jumped and fell again and again, until she knew every tilt and groove in the park.

  Her friends teased her. How she adored Lars! How much time she spent with him! They made her blush red from top to toe. Look at Bea! She’s in love with him already!
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  ‘It’s the skating,’ she insisted. That was all. But in bed at night she squeezed her pillow with delight and grinned into the darkness. Life was sweet, she told herself. Oh yes, life is sweet, life is so sweet! But not because of Lars. Of course not!

  Her mum saw what was going on and worried about her spending so much time with an older boy.

  ‘You’re not his girlfriend, are you?’ she asked, which drove Bea crazy. As if you can’t have a friendship between a boy and a girl that isn’t like that! As if she didn’t know he was far too old for her.

  As if she cared.

  3

  It was mid-week, just ten days before school started. The sun shone in between fluffy white clouds – summer had begun just in time for autumn and Bea was making the most of it. She was practising a move – down one ramp, up the other – twist at the top. Down that side and up the other – twist at the top. Her record so far was five.

  For the tenth time that day she took a fall and ended up rolling on her back in the gully between the ramps. She looked up to the sky and saw something that could not be.

  A man was riding horseback among the clouds.

  She lay still for a second or two, trying to make sense of it. Her eyes spun in her head, her stomach clenched. It was impossible! But when her breath returned, the vision was still there. ‘What’s that?’ she cried, and everyone turned to look.

  ‘What?’ someone asked, and Bea knew in that moment that this was in her eyes only. For the first time in days came a memory . . . a hare with a single eye through which she had seen the universe. Another that had begged her – ‘Let me out!’

  She got up and went to sit on the grass away from the others, as if she were just taking a break. When she was sure no one was watching she tipped her head back and sneaked another look up towards the sky.

  It was still there. The man was wearing old-time clothes, she wasn’t sure from what period. The horse was a great heavy beast with feathery hair around his feet, and although his hooves were treading down on thin air the weight of him seemed to thump around her. It was unmissable – but everyone else was missing it. Bea ran her gaze across the park to see if anyone else had caught her looking, and at once her eye fell on a girl, about ten or eleven, standing over by the tennis courts. She too was gazing up at the rider. As Bea stared, the girl dropped her gaze to look directly at Bea, and pointed up.

  Bea turned away at once, terrified. How could a thing be seen by some people and not by others? Either it was there or it wasn’t. She waited a bit, then glanced back. The girl was staring at her intently. Bea got up abruptly and walked away. If she was going mad, she wanted to do it where no one else could see.

  Out of sight of the skaters she broke into a trot. Past the café on the old bowling green, over the canal into the memorial gardens, where she found a bench. She went the whole way without looking up once, but all the time she was fearfully aware of the events unfolding high over her head. She sat down, cast a wary look each way to make sure no one was watching, then again raised her eyes to the skies.

  The rider had turned his horse round and was trotting towards her now. Closer he came, down from the sky as if he was riding a stairway from heaven. But it wasn’t Bea he was after. Suddenly he stooped low, put an arm out and plucked someone from the air. It was a girl, about four or five years old. She shrieked with excitement as he swung her up and plonked her on the horse in front of him, where she clutched hold of the coarse hair of its mane. Then she turned and looked up into his face, and she beamed, just beamed with pleasure.

  ‘She’s losing them one by one. It’s getting faster, I think,’ said a voice. Bea looked down with a jerk. It was the girl she had just seen in the park – the one who had looked up to the sky and pointed.

  At once Bea got up and began to move off. She didn’t want this. But the girl grabbed her arm.

  ‘I know who you are,’ she said urgently. ‘I saw you looking.’ She pointed up at the sky. Bea’s neck muscles twitched, but she kept her gaze low. She wasn’t going to admit to any­thing. She tried to push her way past again but the girl stood her ground. ‘Wear this,’ she demanded. She thrust something into Bea’s hand. ‘The Hunt knows you’re here. It’ll protect you. Please!’ she begged, seeing the doubt in Bea’s face. ‘It was you on the moors that day, wasn’t it?’ she added.

  Bea hid her shock by looking into her hand at the object the girl had given her. It fitted her palm nicely, but it was a dreadful thing, ugly as mud. It had a long, twisted face, with little blue stones for eyes, a row of tiny wee browny orange stones for teeth, and a sliver of bone for a nose. There was a piece of mirror in the forehead. The whole thing was made out of some kind of dirt. There were feathers and tiny bones rolled up in it. And yet . . .

  . . . and yet the blue eyes stared up at her from the palm of her hand, and the crooked orange teeth glinted in the light. It was dreadful, but Bea felt at once that it was on her side.

  She was so surprised that she wanted such an ugly thing that she raised her head and took a good look at the girl for the first time. She was poor and skinny – poor clothes, poor face, bony from head to foot. She wore tatty old trainers, worn old trackie bottoms and a cheap pink cardigan. Everything about her said poor.

  ‘My grandfather made it for you,’ said the girl. She paused, as if unsure she had the right person. ‘The dogs, the quads. The Hunt. You’re a witch, right? You called the deer – you saved our lives! My grandfather wants to talk to you. We’re past the station, on the waste ground, in the old caravan.’ She nodded across to the wasteland on the other side of the park, eager to get Bea to agree.

  Bea nodded, as much to stop the conversation as in agreement, and as she did, the face wriggled slightly in her hand. She squealed and dropped it, and before she had time to think she’d crouched to pick it up. She looked at it again and it winked at her. Bea jumped, but managed not to drop it again.

  The girl grinned. ‘It’s a beauty, innit?’ she said. ‘That’ll scare ’em off!’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Bea. She thrust the strange little idol into her pocket, slapped her board down on the ground at her feet, jumped on and skated off fast, down the sloping path towards the exit before anything else happened. When she reached the street she got off her board and turned back to look.

  The girl stood watching her. ‘Don’t show it to anyone!’ she shouted urgently. She lifted a hand and waved. Bea turned without waving back and scooted off.

  ‘You’re a witch!’ the girl had said. She had seen the visions in the sky too. But that was impossible. Everyone knew that such things simply didn’t exist. Everyone knew that people who saw things were crazies . . .

  Bea let out a sudden cry of bewilderment. What was happening to her? A woman going past with her two kids looked at her curiously and she turned and ran away from the woman, away from the man on the horse, away from going mad, away from the girl, away from everything impossible. She got out of the park and was halfway home, before her breath gave out on the narrow road that sided the river. There she paused to look up again.

  There was nothing there. Just clouds and sky and jackdaws flying overhead. It had all been an illusion after all. She had been hallucinating. Because if it wasn’t a hallucination – what on earth was it?

  4

  Bea came crashing in the back door and ran upstairs to her room, practically knocking her mum over as she came out of the kitchen.

  ‘Careful!’ her mum called, but Bea ran up without replying, slamming the door behind her. In her room she flung herself on her bed, hid her head and wished it all away.

  Later, when she came down to dinner, she mumbled an apology to her mum for barging her out the way earlier.

  ‘That’s OK,’ her mum said. ‘Let’s face it, you’re at that age. It’s probably just your hormones.’

  Bea rolled her eyes.

  ‘I was hoping it wouldn’t include a bad temper, though.’

  Bea was outraged
. ‘Why do you think everything I say has to do with hormones?’ she demanded. ‘Don’t you ever think I might just be annoyed about something?’

  Her mum wagged her head and smirked at her dad. Bea jumped to her feet. ‘You never take me seriously!’ she yelled.

  Fearing tears, she rushed out of the room, but paused behind the door. All she was doing was proving her mum right. She was about to go back in, but then she heard her father say . . .

  ‘That wasn’t very clever, Kels.’

  ‘It feels like she’s going to have a difficult adolescence,’ her mum sighed. ‘I wonder if it’s got anything to do with that boy she’s hanging out with at the park. He’s too old, and Bea is so naïve . . .’

  ‘Bloody know-all!’ screamed Bea from behind the door.

  ‘That’s enough of that!’ yelled her mum. But Bea was off – out the door and down the steps before another word could be said.

  When she was little, Bea’s mum and dad used to take her for walks in the woods, but although she lived only a few hundred metres away, she never went there any more. Even so, for some reason, when she ran out of her house that day into the gloomy late afternoon she turned up the hill towards the woods rather than taking her usual route down into town. There was a rock by the river among the beech trees she wanted to see. When she was little she used to love to hang over the edge, watching the water stream by. Perhaps she wanted to recapture those still moments when she was small and life was simpler?

  She was confused, upset and exhilarated all at once. What if she was going mad? Surely she was! Didn’t mad people see things that no one else did? They listened to the voices and did as they were told . . .

  ‘Let me out!’ the hare had said. And she had.

  The rock was wet, but she sat on it anyway. The water ran by, just the same; it was Bea who had changed. Nervously she peeped up at the sky breaking blue above the leaves and at the water running below her. All she saw was sky and clouds and trees and water, yet she felt a presence. Eyes in the shadows out of sight, faces hiding in the rocks, green arms and twiggy fingers shifting in the foliage just beyond her gaze. Watching her. Waiting for her . . .