As the English witch had explained to me, Lisa has instinctively realised that I’m here to cause him harm.
She had seen the disappearance of the angel as an ill omen. My unexpected arrival had only added to her sense of unease.
Lisa was in love with Richard. She had arrived here as a young girl, no older than I am now.
Richard, of course, had been the age he is now, has always been the age he is now.
Apparently young enough for her to fall in love with him.
And she, of course, had been young enough for him to fall in love with her.
Only as he refused to age did she begin to realise his true nature. But by then she was too deeply smitten to see any ill within him.
And he, he simply forgot that he had loved her. Forgot that they had once been the same age.
For part of the spell ensures he can never truly remember who he really is.
Although even that part of the spell, of course, is weakening. Weakening as the darkness in the garden, within the castle, grows.
*
Will the spell I’ve learned from the book finally cast Richard completely back into his realm of darkness?
The English witch had assured me that the book would provide me with the means to defeat him: that, even though her own powers were now limited within my world, she would do all she could to ensure I was safe.
Richard was still weak, she had said: he shouldn’t be any problem, even for a novice witch.
Despite all these reassurances of the English witch, I climbed the steps leading up to the tower’s highest room with a nervousness that left me visibly trembling with fear.
The stairs wound upwards, narrowing as they spiralled ever higher.
Naturally, King Richard hadn’t needed to continue practising his newly discovered skills of witchcraft. He had more than enough worldly power, and he was wily enough to recognise that improving his capabilities would leave him open to the treacheries of the darkrealm.
Even so, the darker Richard’s own powers were phenomenal, for he was a creation of the book, itself a creation of many witches, of numerous powers and skills.
So phenomenal, in fact, that he had continued to live long after the king had died, rather than the more customary century.
The ancient door leading into the small room wasn’t locked.
Obviously, Lisa hadn’t expected me to come into this part of the castle, which was so far from my own room.
The room was incredibly small. There was room only for a small, simple bed.
It was a complete contrast to the luxury of Richard’s own room.
Richard was asleep in the bed, his breathing heavy, laboured.
He looked so innocent. So handsome.
That, the English witch had warned me, was a major part of his power. Hadn’t it led to her own mistakes, her own downfall?
The beam of light coming in from the sole, slim window added to this sense of spiritual innocence. It fell across the pure white sheets of his bed in an almost religious fashion.
The falling snow softly tapped against the glass, the only sound but for Richard’s pained breaths.
I hadn’t brought the book with me. The incantation had been easy to remember.
As I opened my mouth to rush out the very first words, there was a flash of white light by the window.
The angel was hovering there, caught and illuminated in the narrow beam of white light. Glistening and sparkling in that gloriously white light, it could have been a real angel, but for its miniature size, its complete motionlessness.
Even so, its very stillness, its silence, added to the sense of sublime serenity.
As I had seen once before, when the English witch had appeared in my room, the angel appeared to rapidly dissolve in the diffusion of light. With an urgent fluttering of wings, it transformed into the magpie.
Had the English witch decided to offer me her support, her guidance?
I glanced quickly about the room, hoping she was indeed here.
And she was; she was by the bed, by Richard.
Yet although she seemed aware of Richard, she didn’t seem to register my presence.
She wasn’t really here, it seemed to me. She was oblivious to me, to the surrounding room.
She wasn’t darkly dressed, or suffused in darkness.
It was the English witch as I had seen her when approaching the castle. Before she had been imprisoned within the darkrealm.
*
Around the English witch, darkly-uniformed men stand rigidly.
German officers, soldiers.
Watching her intently, expectantly. Waiting for her to accomplish something.
She closes her eyes, concentrating deeply.
Her outstretched hands pass through Richard; for her, he isn’t there, after all.
Weirdly, she’s intently staring at what must be an empty bed.
She raises her hands, runs them slowly above and then even through the bed. As if forming a shape of a person there. Closely following the contours of a seated figure.
Something akin to light, yet in substance perhaps more like milk, or the latex pouring from a deliberately cut tree, begins to flow from her. Not just from her hands, but from her whole body.
Yet it is her hands that are dictating the formation, the solidification, of that milky latex.
A body is forming beneath her flowing hands.
Another Richard.
A Richard who’s slightly different to the Richard I knew was really lying there.
This newly created Richard is seated, as if on a specially prepared throne, rather than lying on a bed.
And yet, yes, he is asleep, although he doesn’t seem anywhere near so ill, so laboured in his breathing.
It’s the witch who’s finding it hard to breath. As she rises from beside Richard’s side, she almost stumbles, perhaps weakened by her spells and charms.
A flash of blue light abruptly spreads out about foot before her, much as a tin of blue paint would explode if flung at a large pane of glass.
The witch is thrown back, and up into the air, effortlessly passing through the room’s wall (which, of course, doesn’t exist for her).
Instead, she flies the length of what would be a much larger room. She comes to an abrupt, bone-jarring halt as she finally strikes a wall that remains invisible to me.
A darkness suddenly spreads around me: but, like the witch, it isn’t a darkness confined by the room I’m standing in.
There’s a shiver within that darkness as a figure confidently strides past me.
At first, I take it to be one of the darkly-uniformed soldiers. Yet its presence leaves me trembling.
It’s one of Richard’s demons, come late to rescue him from slipping under the witch’s control.
Just as I’d witnessed at that battle that had taken place centuries ago, the demon moves as if part of the darkness itself. It’s impossible to tell where the air is darkened and where the darkness of the demon comes into being.
It flows effortlessly past me, effortlessly through the air, like smoke caught on a swift breeze.
Just as a haze of blue light had burst around the English witch, a splurge of midnight-blue suddenly surges around the demon.
It runs and flows around him, yet stays at least a foot away from his dark body, as if flowing over a glass dome.
The English witch has cast a retaliatory spell. Not with outstretched hands, as I would have expected, but with light that simply seems to emanate from within her.
Although she had appeared to fall painfully and limply to the floor after she had been flung against the wall, she now leaps up into the air as if partially flying.
The demon strikes back with his own bolts of blue light.
Once again, the light strikes and flows over what is o
bviously the witch’s defensive shield. Yet some of that light seeps through what could have been cracks in that defence, bolts crackling viciously as they curl around the young girl’s body.
She writhes, as if tortured with pain.
Although seemingly unaffected by the bolts of light, the soldiers scatter in panic as falling debris crashes amongst them. Others fruitlessly attempt to kill the demon with long blasts from their machineguns.
The witch’s own strikes against the demon are hardly more successful. They merely stream around the curving shield.
Sometimes, they possess enough force to fling the demon backwards, lifting him off his feet to smash him against a wall lying far outside the room I’m standing in.
Similarly, a spiralling bolt from the demon casts the witch up high, throwing her hard against what would have been a ceiling for her.
Her body jolts with the impact, the agony.
She falls with a harsh thump to the floor. She looks too weak, too badly injured, to continue the fight for much longer.
The demon flings another bolt of light at her, one that cackles ominously as it penetrates the shield’s growing cracks.
The witch writhes and screams as the shimmering light envelopes her: and then, abruptly, she was gone.
She had vanished.
Only the sparkling light remains, jerking and snapping as it continues to course over the memory of her crouching body.
I had just seen the English witch being been cast over into the darkrealm, as she had told me she had.
The demon strides over towards the bed, where Richard is still asleep.
He peers down at Richard, letting another, less harshly crackling form of blue light swim over him.
It appears to have no effect. Yet, for all I knew, it may have lessened the power of the witch’s charms.
The demon, however, sighs irately, as if frustrated in his attempt to curtail any effect of the English witch’s spells.
He turns to leave.
And then I realise the demon isn’t a ‘he’ after all.
For she is the English witch.
*
Chapter 35
The tiny five-pointed star, or pentagram, opposite the berry’s stalk is an outward manifestation of the Rowan’s protective powers.
A Guide for Young Wytches
The English witch had just banished the English witch to the darkrealm.
Didn’t I learn from the book that every witch – no matter how morally good she hopes to be – has a darker side to her, existing within what is now Richard’s realm?
So, the demonic witch was her dark side.
What better demon could Richard call upon for his defence against the English witch’s spells?
Yet if the English witch had been cast into the darkrealm – well, then did that mean there were now two English witches living in Richard’s kingdom?
How did that work out?
I flinched as yet another flash of blue light surged through the air off to my right. But it wasn’t the casting of another spell, as I’d feared.
It was the magpie, languidly fluttering through the air.
I’d forgotten that a magpie isn’t purely black and white; there’s also, of course, a flash of dark blue along its wings.
What’s more, this wasn’t the magpie I’d seen in the garden. It was a magpie with its black and white feathers in the right positions; a black tail, white breast.
Like a dove, dipped in black. With, of course, that flash of midnight blue.
I’d never really noticed the streak of dark blue before.
A dark blue, like the sky at the end of a day, before the darkness of night – a point of crossover, where the two realms of light and darkness overlap.
Like the blue spells I’ve just watched being cast.
Like the light blue wassail ball, that allowed me to strike out at that poor demonic child.
The light blue of morning, as darkness gives way to the light of day.
Was this the same magpie that had appeared within the room earlier? My memory was too confused to be sure which magpie that had been: this one, or its negative.
‘Daniella! What are you doing here?’
Lisa was at the door. Even though she was obviously furious with me, she rushed past, almost knocking me out of the way.
She leant over Richard, swiftly making a quick check that he hadn’t suffered any recent harm.
Making sure I hadn’t injured him, it seemed to me.
‘I…I haven’t hurt him.’
Of course, that was true. I wasn’t going to add, naturally, that I had intended to harm him.
Lisa glanced up at me, staring directly into my eyes with a ferocious intensity.
‘Who are you Daniella?’
‘Who am I?’ What a strange question! ‘You know who I am: I was on holiday, where I was fooled into thinking I’d met Richard there!’
‘Corfu, yes? So tell me, Daniella; how did you get there?’
Weirdly, I briefly found myself having to think about this.
‘We’ll, by boat, of course.’
‘You didn’t fly?’
‘Fly?’ I chuckled. ‘My parents wouldn’t be able to afford to fly! I’m not sure there’s an airport there, anyway.’
‘Oh, there’s an airport there, believe me.’ Lisa was still continuing to tend to Richard – making sure he was wrapped up well within the bedsheets, wiping sweat from his brow with a tissue – yet also frequently glanced my way with a suspicious glare. ‘But why couldn’t your parents afford to fly? You do realise it’s usually cheaper to fly than go by boat?’
‘Well, yes, yes, of course…’
My voice trailed off doubtfully.
‘Do you know what year it is?’
Lisa asked this calmly, apparently innocently.
‘Of course, it’s…it’s…’
I didn’t know.
I really had no idea what year it was.
*
Chapter 36
Write down on a piece of paper either a situation or the name of a person you are seeking protection from.
Next, wrap it around thorns gathered from the Hawthorn (May Tree or White Thorn). Then bury it all near to that same tree.
A Guide for Young Wytches
‘Look at your clothes.’
Lisa remorselessly continued her inquisition, a remorselessness at odds with the tender care she was administering to the sleeping Richard.
‘My clothes?’
I stared down at the blouse and skirt I was wearing.
‘What’s wrong with them?’
‘A little dated, don’t you think? For a young girl like you?’
‘Are they? I hadn’t thought so. Perhaps fashion’s different here?’
‘I checked the labels, the clothes in your room–’
‘You’ve been searching my roo–’
Lisa cut off my complaint.
‘Most of those labels went out of business just after the war. They haven’t produced any new clothes for tens of years. I checked.’
‘There must be some mistake–’
‘Your clothes are far older than I am. Yet, on you, they’re like new. And I mean really new; like they’ve never, ever been worn before.’
I glanced down at my clothes once again.
She was right; the material sparkled, possessing none of the dullness of regularly washed clothes.
Even so, I protested my innocence, continuing to search for reasons and explanations.
‘Holiday clothes; they’re always new…’
‘Half a century old, Daniella; they’re over half a century old!’
‘Where’s all this going? I don’t understand what you mean. Okay, so, somehow – I’m not s
ure how, I’ve got to admit – somehow I’ve got these old clothes. Perhaps from some sort of period shop, I’m not sure–’
I’m struggling to remember how it came to be that I’m wearing spanking new clothes that are actually from the war period.
At last, my mind grasp with relief at a fact that seems to have escaped Lisa’s attention.
‘But I had a cellphone too! A cellphone! That’s from now! And I know what the internet is…and computer tablets!’
Even as I blurt it all out, it dawns on me that it all sounds strangely desperate. Like I’m trying to prove something I don’t actually believe in myself.
‘Sure you do,’ Lisa agrees nonchalantly, at last rising from Richard’s side and slowly approaching me. ‘That’s what makes all this so strange, so – unreal.’
‘So unreal – like Richard, maybe?’
The English witch had joined in our conversation.
She was suddenly standing in virtually the same position she’d been in when she had vanished. Unlike then, though, she wasn’t crouched, wasn’t screaming in agony.
A darkness writhed around her, wisps of a pure blackness snaking through the already dulled air. The magpie had vanished; although how long it had been gone, I couldn’t be sure.
Which English witch was this one?
The one who had been imprisoned within the darkness?
Or the one who was a part of that darkness?
If the latter, that made her, like Lisa, an ally of Richard.
‘You!’
Lisa stared at the new arrival not with surprise but with sheer hate.
‘You know me?’ The witch frowned in highly-amused puzzlement. ‘Now that is interesting – but for the moment, I’m not quite sure in what way.’
‘You’re working with her?’
As Lisa indicated the witch with an accusatory finger, she glowered at me now with as much hate as she had originally directed at her.
‘The spell, Daniella,’ the witch stated flatly, ignoring Lisa’s fury as if it were all nothing more than theatrics. ‘Use the spell!’
‘No, no more spells!’
Spinning around, Lisa rushed towards and leant protectively across Richard.
I hesitated.
I’d never really been sure I wanted to hurt Richard; and I certainly didn’t wish to harm Lisa.
And as soon as I cast my spell – then does that mean my own dark version is created within Richard’s realm? A darker me that might one day seek to conquer me, to take me over?
‘Ah, his own charm is still dangerously powerful, I see,’ the English witch calmly observed.
Lisa saw that I was hesitating, that I wasn’t certain about what I should do.
‘Don’t you realise what will happen if you kill him?’ she asked tearfully.