A Guide for Young Wytches Read online

  ‘If Richard didn’t know you, why did he go along with this ridiculous idea that he’d invited you here?’

  Lisa glowered at me with particular hatred as she asked this question.

  ‘I suppose he’s lonely–’

  ‘Nothing to do with your remarkable beauty, naturally?’ she sneered.

  ‘I wouldn’t say I was beautiful–’

  ‘You don’t have to – because you quite obviously are! For girls like you, everything in life comes so easily to you that you have no real understanding of the real world!’

  I couldn’t understand why the way I looked irritated her so much. Did she feel that I’d unfairly entranced Richard?

  Her bitterness when it came to beauty was particularly odd. Even now, despite her age, she was an amazingly attractive woman: effortlessly elegant, languidly graceful. In a way, too, that anyone might envy. She was sophisticated to a level few achieve, for it appeared so inherently natural.

  When younger, she must have benefited from an admirable beauty in her own right.

  Was that it? Did she resent that her beauty had – if not actually faded – had changed?

  She must have seen the confusion and hurt in either my eyes or my shocked expression.

  ‘You can see him,’ she declared sternly, as if every word was being unfairly forced from her mouth. ‘It might help him. We can see how it goes.’

  ‘Oh thank you, thank you so much!’

  I was so relived that she had given me this unexpected concession that I almost reached out to grab her hands in my excitement.

  ‘He does seem lonely,’ I added brightly. ‘I can’t understand why!’

  ‘There’s a lot you probably can’t understand!’ Lisa turned to leave. ‘But that doesn’t mean it has to be explained to you!’

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 8

  At the time of a New Moon, carefully gather strips of bark from the White Birch (Lady of the Woods). Write ‘Bring me true love’ in red ink on a strip, then cast it into a stream of flowing water saying: ‘Message of love, I set you free, to capture a love and return to me.’ (Do not direct your charm towards a specific person!)

  A Guide for Young Wytches

   

   

  When I visited Richard again, he was sitting up in bed, looking nowhere near as haggard as the last time I had seen him.

  He looked, in fact, far more like the boy I had seen on holiday.

  The boy who couldn’t possibly have been him.

  ‘And this boy who you say looked like me,’ he asked after a few minutes of mainly polite conversation and small talk: ‘did you like him?’

  ‘Yes, yes; very much,’ I answered truthfully.

  ‘You found him, er, ah…attractive?’

  I nodded, smiled.

  ‘Are you saying I’d just walk into any old castle of any boy I didn’t find attractive?’

  ‘He’d have to be incredibly charming to persuade you to come and visit him, I think. I envy him; to have such an effect on such…such a, er, beautiful girl.’

  I smiled again.

  ‘I think that if it had been you who had invited me here, I would still have definitely accepted.’

  Now he was the one who smiled, obviously appreciating my flattery.

  ‘What did he tell you about the castle?’ he asked. ‘Did he seem to know much about it?’

  ‘Of course; that’s what made it all seem all too believable. When I arrived here in the taxi, the castle was more or less as I’d expected it to look; well, apart from its immense size, its grandeur. No description could prepare you for that!’

  ‘He must have done an awful lot of research; but why? How would inviting you out to a castle he doesn’t live in help him achieve anything?’

  I hadn’t really considered this point before.

  ‘I suppose,’ I answered, ‘it was his way of ensuring I’d be impressed by him. Yet he was handsome, and, as you say, very charming! I was interested in him before he mentioned the castle.’

  Richard pondered this for a moment.

  ‘Perhaps he noticed a similarity to the way I looked long ago: and he’s been playing this role for so long now, he’s almost come to see himself as actually being me!’

  ‘Anyway, I’m grateful he did make a fool of me; otherwise, I wouldn’t be here, would I?’

  He smiled again.

  ‘Yes; whoever he is, I have a great deal to thank him for, don’t I?’

   

   

  *

   

   

  As I left Richard’s room – Richard having decided that he needed to sleep once more – I was instantly hit with an irate glare from Lisa.

  She was standing on the landing leading to the stairs, giving the impression that she’d been waiting there the entire time I’d been in Richard’s room.

  I smiled, yet didn’t receive one back.

  She icily walked past me, heading towards one of the hallways leading off from the almost circular landing. I made for the stairs, intending to head back to my room for a while.

  I passed close by the bared top of the Christmas tree.

  Yet it wasn’t completely bare.

  The sparkling blue wassail ball I had watched fall from the tree earlier was back in its original position.

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 9

  To get a better view, we are prepared to move our position. So if we have a problem, we should also accept that it might change if we view it differently.

  A Guide for Young Wytches

   

   

  Of course, a highly attentive member of the staff might have noticed that I’d hung the beautifully glistening blue ball much lower down from where it had initially been hanging.

  Yet why would anyone go to such remarkable trouble – it would have required the use of a large stepladder to reach up here – to re-hang a ball in its original place, as if every ornament had a specific, unchanging position on the tree?

   Besides, just where were these highly attentive members of staff?

  I still hadn’t seen even one of them moving around the castle. I thought I’d heard them working on a number of occasions, catching far off the drone of powerful vacuums, the clank of ceramics being replaced on mantelpieces and tables after cleaning and polishing; yet I still hadn’t come across any actual people.

  Passing a room in which I’d believed I’d heard maids giggling as they worked, I’d even quietly slipped the door open, hoping to catch them hard at work; yet the room had been entirely empty. It partially sparkled, however, as if I had interrupted a team as they’d begun cleaning the room.

  The sounds I’d heard had also vanished on my opening of the door, leaving me wondering if I’d simply imagined it all.

  As I passed this same room once more, I took another look inside. The cleaning that had been started earlier was now finished, everything there – the vast table, the matching wooden chairs, the surrounding furniture and ornaments – gleaming with heavily and expertly buffed polish.

  I’d heard of palaces and castles that had special back stairs, even hidden passageways behind the walls, for the servants to go about their business without being seen. Was that all that I was witnessing here?

  What was the alternative?

  A magical, invisible staff?

   

   

  *

   

   

  I felt a sudden, cold draught run across the back of my neck.

  Looking up towards the looming windows, I looked out yet again upon nothing more than an angry flurry of white.

  Yet one of the uppermost and smaller windows was broken. And it wasn’t just a crack, either. There was a reasonably large, jagged hole there. Snowflakes were streaming through, falling across part of the table.

&nbs
p; It was odd that I hadn’t noticed it before.

  Then again, just how many more things am I going to remain oblivious to until they just about leap into and strike me across the face?

  I seem to be walking around everywhere in a delirious dream, being only partially aware of my surroundings and situation.

  I was dragged out of my admonishing thoughts and brought back into the real world by an irate squawk. There was an angry flutter of feathers, more squeals and squawks.

  A flash of white, of black, rushing through the air almost in front of me.

  The magpie.

  Somehow, it had smashed its way through the upper window and ended up in here.

  The mantelpiece of the huge, gaping fireplace was a mess. The ornaments gracing its top were all awry, some even in danger of toppling and falling to the floor.

  Weren’t magpies attracted to sparkling objects? Is that why it was in here?

  Had it been searching for something to steal, something to take back to its nest?

  I considered calling for a member of staff to help me chase the bird back outside.

  One of those members of staff I’d never seen, never come across.

  I started to shoo the bird myself, moving towards it, waving my arms. I was hoping I could somehow direct it back through the hole, rather than scaring it and making it cause even more damage in here.

  Thankfully, I appeared to be dealing with a surprisingly intelligent bird.

  It rose up towards the crooked hole. It vanished through it with nothing more than another irate squawk, this one apparently aimed back at me for disturbing it.

  I dashed towards the fireplace, carefully moving the larger pieces back from their precarious positions near the shelf edge. There were also a lot of smaller, more jewel-like items that needed replacing in small, lidded bowls.

  One of these, which I’d originally mistaken for a dull brooch, tingled sharply in my hand. I briefly feared that I’d stabbed myself on its pin.

  But I was suddenly no longer standing within the room. I was, instead, peering out through heavily smeared glass; at a black and fiery landscape.

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 10

   

  The earth below me would have been perfectly black but for the glowing reds and yellows of the intense fires.

  There was a constant series of crumps, of cracks, many of which heralded the birth of a new fire.

  The air around me shook. It wasn’t easy keeping the small and flimsy plane I was piloting steady.

  Instead of avoiding the burning city below me, I was deliberately dropping lower, lower, passing between the looming, dark shells of almost wholly destroyed buildings.

  The strip of land cleared for my landing now lay directly ahead of me, lit by fiercely burning oil drums packed with rags. (Petrol was too expensive to waste, even for something as important as this.)

  The flurry of snow beating against my plane’s windshield was more dangerous than it had been when I was flying higher. It obstructed my view of what was already a dangerously narrow and short landing strip.

  I brought the plane’s wheels down as soon as I could, praying we weren’t going to hit any loose rubble, any holes in the road the soldiers hadn’t been able to pack with stones.

  The wheel struts boasted truly remarkable suspension; yet even so, they struck the ground with a jolt that took the wind out of me.

  From behind me, there was an echoing gasp.

  A passenger; I have a passenger.

  Yes, I remember now.

  Not a ‘he’, but a ‘she’.

  What’s she doing here? Why am I wasting precious time and petrol – maybe even my life! – to fly her in here?

  She’s English.

  She made no effort to hide the fact. And yet it’s the English, the Americans and the Russians who we we’re fighting against.

  Loosing badly against.

  The airbrakes of my plane screamed as they fought to pull us up in time, to stop us careering into the piles of rubble blocking off most of the road.

  The plane bounced, jerked, shuddered alarmingly.

  For a brief second, as I always did when I landed here amongst Berlin’s rubble-strewn streets, I feared that I’d taken one too many chances with my life.

  But the plane at last began to slow, to stop, the tail dropping, the propeller slowing to a stuttering whine as I shut everything down. I used what little momentum I still had to violently skew the plane to one side, making it ready for a swift turnaround.

  Even as my passenger and I threw open our doors, a small group of the waiting soldiers were running across the tarmac towards us.

  Boots thudded on the road they’d painstakingly cleared of snow and ice to aid my landing. Weapons and belts clanked, despite the muting effects of their heavy if threadbare overcoats.

  They all looked so old. Some of them, indeed, were very old, veterans of the last war conscripted for the final battle for Berlin.

  Most had thick beards, the only way to keep out the intense cold when your uniforms are old and torn.

  The men, like their uniforms, are remnants. Just about all that remains of an army once numbered in millions.

   

   

  *

   

   

  As the men help us to the ground, I spot something far worse than the conscription of old men: boy soldiers are rushing through the rubble. Too young, even, to carry their guns high enough to stop their butts striking the bricks and stones.

  Those fortunate enough to have helmets rather than soft forage caps struggle to keep them level. Their young heads are too small. Their minute, scared if strangely determined faces are overshadowed by the overhanging iron.

  As they pass by, they either glare or stare in bemusement at me, at my passenger; doubtlessly wondering what women are doing here in this very worst area of hell.

  A tank stands nearby, massive and dark. It looms over these boys as they stoically lope towards where the fighting is hardest.

  It gives them false confidence, the tank.

  They don’t know its petrol tank is probably near empty. Its ammunition shelves will be in an even worse state.

  The tank itself is just one of a handful around here. No match at all for the superior numbers the Russians can throw at us.

  Suddenly, coming from just beyond the idling tank, there’s an irritated chatter of machine guns. The sharp crack of rifles, cries of horror and fear.

  All this is nearer than the regular crump of explosions. It’s an attack. And taking place shockingly close too.

  I take out my pistol, looking out into the darkness where our soldiers are running back here, running for their lives.

  Despite their exhaustion, their hunger, they’re sprinting back towards us as if the hounds of Hell are after them.

  When I hear the howls and snarls coming on ever closer behind them, I wonder if it is indeed hellhounds that have been released on our men, our boys, their granddads.

  In the flickering red light coming from the handful of flaming oil drums yet to be doused, the massive wolf that leaps across the rubble could indeed be a hound from Hell.

  He effortlessly brings down the poor boy whose back he leaps upon. With a snap of his immense maw, he snaps the boy’s neck. He ignores my pistol shots, despite the blood abruptly spurting from each rapidly inflicted wound.

  There are suddenly more of them, these wolves the size of lions. Swifter than cheetahs, more ravenous and merciless than tigers.

  They explode out of the complete darkness lying outside of the sphere of light cast by the burning drums, ripping through the fleeing men, easily overtaking them. Easily bringing them down.

  Some of the older, more experienced men turn to release a burst of machinegun fire at the wolf bearing down on them, the wolf leaping towards them. Yet just as the wolf who had killed the boy shrugged off my pi
stol shots, these wolves similarly ignore even the most vicious wounds to their bodies. Their minds are focused only on attacking, on killing, on riving throats clean away in a splatter of blood.

  I’m just about to run myself, even though I know it’s hopeless, that I’ll never outrun these demonic wolves. Then, out of nowhere, there’s a flash as blinding as a close strike of lightning.

  Everywhere is abruptly lit up, as if by a segment of the sun fallen to Earth.

  No matter where they are, no matter what they’re doing, the wolves all instantly go limp. Toppling over. Falling out of the air, if in mid-leap.

  As they fall, they transform, becoming in an instant naked men, naked women.

  I whirl around, to see where this miraculous ball of light had emanated from.

  It’s the English woman; she’s the source.

  She still has her hands raised. Still has a grim smile.

  And suddenly, I know what she’s doing here.

  She’s a witch.

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 11

  Making your Own Wand: Part 1

  Creating your own wand will help you connect spiritually to the tree you took the wood from.

  A Guide for Young Wytches

   

   

  Back in my room, I sat on the edge of my bed, worried.

  What’s happening to me?

  Why am I getting these flashbacks when– no, they’re not flashbacks, are they?

  At least, they’re not flashbacks to past events in my life.

  But then, what other word is there for such a phenomenon?

  Even so, they’re not even flashbacks to previous events within a single person’s life.

  The girl in the car arriving at the castle was a different person to the woman piloting the plane.

  I don’t have any proof of that, naturally.

  It’s just a sense I have that that’s the case.

  I’d taken a closer look at what I’d originally taken to be a brooch. It wasn’t a brooch, it was a medal.

  A German medal, going by the inscription, the spread-winged eagle.

  Whereas the book, the one that gave me the sense that I was arriving at the castle, is in English.

  The witch? The passenger in the plane?

  She was English.

  Is she the connection?

  Yet the witch launching that ball of light was hardly a novice requiring a guide, was she? And this was despite her looking little older than sixteen.

  Maybe she’d arrived at the castle at an earlier date to her appearance in Berlin’s ruins?

  Or maybe she’d just brought the book with her as a memento of her earlier days as a novice?

  When she’d signed the book, it was nineteen thirty six.