An Errant Witch Read online

  ‘I didn’t! I didn’t drink at the stupid well, I didn’t even stop near it,’ I said.

  ‘Where did all that come from then?’ We watched as the last of the energy fizzed against a cobweb far above our heads.

  ‘Honestly, Sandy, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I was just out on the mountain before I came here, and, and something weird happened to me.’ I watched him closely. How much could I trust him?

  Of all the people on this island, Sandy might be the only one I could confide in. I took a deep breath, wanting to tell all, to unburden myself, but he didn’t give me the chance.

  ‘You were out on the hills?’ He broke in sharply. ‘How far did you go?’

  ‘I came to this stone tower, do you know it? It was the oddest...’

  He grabbed my arm and before I could finish and hustled me out of my safe nook. He rushed me away from the circular tower and down a dark corridor, little used, judging by the amount of dust on the floor, until we came to a door and he thrust us both in. We were in some kind of medieval broom closet or lavatory, I couldn’t tell, but it stunk bad in there and was really dark.

  ‘You didn’t go to the Broch?’ He hissed, his mouth almost on my ear.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The tower! Did you touch the tower?’ The urgency in his whisper was unmistakable.

  Touch it? I’d hugged the damn thing when I’d reached it; the memory of the feeling of coming home swam over me again.

  ‘Yeah, sort of,’ I said. ‘But why? What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘We really need to talk,’ he said in a firm whisper. ‘But not within the walls of the castle.’

  Chapter 10

  HE LED ME OUT of the closet, down through the stone corridors, along the passage we’d walked the previous evening, and out into the walled garden again. But he didn’t stop there – we continued through a door set leading out of the stone courtyard, and then out along the beach to a large rock overlooking the sea.

  I sat gingerly on the boulder, remembering the rock beast from yesterday, but this one was safe. Or at least, if it was alive, it was sleeping soundly. Besides, the beast had been on the other side of the strait of water. Rocks couldn’t swim, could they?

  Sandy stood before me, worry etched onto his broad face. ‘If you’d touched the broch, that would explain the loose magic on you,’ he said. ‘Hardly anyone knows about the Broch, and the ones who do know, would be unhappy that you’ve discovered it.’

  ‘But why? And who built it? What’s it doing out there in the middle of nowhere?’

  He drew himself up to his full height, which wasn’t very much, yet still he had an air of pride as he began his story.

  ‘The Broch was built by my distant ancestors, the clan before the McClouds,’ he said. ‘Thousands of years ago, that’s how long we’d been here on Scarp. The Broch is very special.’

  I waited.

  ‘It holds the Crystal Charm Stone,’ he said, his pale blue eyes boring into mine.

  Timothy, the Englishman, the Southerner, had scoffed at the story of the stone, and so had the others, so much that Sandy had walked off in a rage.

  ‘The Crystal Charm Stone,’ I repeated for lack of anything else to say. The others said it was a legend, no more than a fairy tale, but he believed in it strongly.

  He nodded solemnly. ‘The Clach Seun.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to be?’

  ‘Ye’ve niver heard of the Clach Seun?’

  Why was it with Scottish people that whenever they get their knickers in a knot, their accent became so strong? I’d noticed it with Hugh, and Fergie too. Sandy was beginning to sound like a parody of himself.

  ‘Calm down,’ I said, placing my hand on his arm. ‘I’m not like the others, okay? I’m not just out to make fun of you. I’ve never heard of this stone you’re talking about before coming here. Have you... seen it?’

  He didn’t answer, just watched as a slow wave broke upon the pebbled beach, the water catching the sunlight as it trickled back to the sea.

  ‘It’s true.’ His bottom lip was jutting out in a pout. ‘It’s not made up. I swear on my clan’s name.’

  ‘Why do you think this stone is in the tower?’

  ‘It’s not a tower, it’s a Broch.’

  ‘Fine. Broch, then.’

  ‘I’ll tell you the story.’ He sighed soulfully and placed himself on the boulder next to me, staring out to the coastline across the water.

  I was getting just a tad impatient. I wanted, no I needed to tell Sandy about my mother locked up in this tower, and to marshal his help in rescuing her, but it looked like I’d have to pay my dues by sitting through his story first. I gave a sigh to match his and grabbed a couple of more shortbread from his tin as I prepared to wait, but then, out of the corner of my eye I saw a slight movement on the beach, the tiniest shift of a white granite boulder.

  After yesterday’s run in with the living rock, it was only natural I gave a start. Sandy hadn’t noticed a thing, gazing off into the distance as he was and setting the scene for his story.

  ‘Um,’ I said, lifting my feet off the beach as if that would save me. I watched as the boulder moved again, yes it was definitely coming my way, and I recognized the glint as the black eye opened, so like a seal but made of pure living rock.

  It was the same beast I’d had the run-in with yesterday, I was pretty sure I recognized the pattern of black and pink markings around its snout, and it was making a beeline straight for me. So they could swim after all or, if not able to float, they might crawl across the sea bed.

  ‘The Crystal Charm Stone, no one knows how it was originally created,’ Sandy began in his deep voice, his cadence beating with the wash of the waves upon the stony beach, totally unaware of the small drama taking place right next to him.

  I attempted to shoo the creature away but the attention only seemed to encourage it. The beast came right up to me, and I could swear it was sniffing all around me like a cat would. A hungry feline, but I wasn’t its prey.

  No, the darned rock had its beady eye on my chocolate shortbread! It gave a little mewl (such a small sound from the large boulder) and nudged the hand with the tin in it; it felt like my hand was being pushed with a brick. I carefully lifted the plastic holder out of the tin and set it down on the ground with the remaining shortbread, nudging it over to the beast with my foot.

  ‘The Crystal Charm Stone came from the North Kingdom as the dowry of a princess whom my ancestors captured. So it was brought to the island after a successful raid.’ Sandy hadn’t noticed a thing.

  I watched in silence as the beast slavered and gobbled the chocolate and buttery goodness along with the plastic liner. It was all gone within seconds. The beast swallowed, then gave a small cough, which became a bigger one as it hunched its shoulders like a cat with a hairball stuck in its throat. I watched fascinated, as the creature urged and heaved until the black plastic finally shot out of its mouth, all covered in seaweed and slimy fish scales. The beast then laid down at my feet and leaned against my own rock seat, gave the tiniest yawn and settled back to sleep.

  This whole time, Sandy was still yawning on about his ancestors. The legend was that this stone and the princess’s magic blood gave power to his ancestors; they became a fierce and marauding tribe holding domination over all the islands in the Hebrides. Rumors of its magical abilities spread abroad and to keep their lodestone safe, they painstakingly built the huge broch without doors or windows and placed the stone inside. For thousands of years, his clan ruled the waters and the land hereabouts, keeping the crystal out of the hands of their enemies.

  ‘So what happened?’ I asked, trying not to allow the disbelief color my voice, still keeping a careful eye on the boulder by my side. ‘Your clan, they’re not so powerful now are they?’

  He shook his head. ‘It happened on a dark and stormy night. The men of the clan were out raiding on the mainland, down past the Isle of Skye, this was b
ack in the time King James the First, of Scotland mind, not his weak-minded descendant who inherited the English throne. The organized Witch Kin, they were based in Edinburgh right from the start, and they were jealous of our power. They cast a spell and took control of the stone.’

  ‘They got into the tower?’

  He shot me a pained look. ‘It’s not a tower, I told you, it’s a Broch. There’s a world of difference.

  ‘And yes,’ he continued, nodding his head. ‘They found the secret entrance, the only way in, and they took possession of it. And ever since that day, very few know of its existence, only the high-ups in the Kin.’

  ‘And you,’ I prodded him, trying to get him to the end of the story.

  ‘Yes, and the remnants of my clan,’ he agreed. ‘My great-grannie told me the stories when I was a wee lad.’

  ‘So your family just, what? Let it go without a fight?’

  ‘There was a terrible battle, yet neither side won,’ he said. ‘The McClouds were made strong by living in close contact with the Stone for fifteen hundred years, but they didn’t have the sophistication of the Kin and their magic, and it was too much for them to conquer. There was an uneasy compromise made wherein the McClouds would be the caretakers of the Clach Seun, and the Kin would ensure the safety of it for all time.’

  ‘Are you still the keepers?’ I tried to keep the growing excitement out of my voice. If he knew the way into the tower... This would make it much easier for Sandy to help free my mother.

  He shook his head. ‘A couple of hundred years ago, there was another Sandy McCloud, my direct ancestor, he tried to lead an uprising, for the Kin had tried to forbid us from raiding other clans, said it was barbaric behavior. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as you can well understand, for we had to show strength to other lands else they would come and over-run us. It was our tradition, and the traditions of all the Scottish clans. To make a long story short, the rebellion failed and the McClouds were sent away from their ancestral home in disgrace, and the glory of the Clan McCloud faded quickly, along with the legend of the stone. The Kin have seen to that.

  ‘Yet for all that, the Crystal Charm Stone still recognizes our blood and welcomes us back. It does not care about the rules the Kin are responsible for that.’

  The wind was rising, the lowering sun stretched the shadows long, and the air was growing chilled. The gory tale he’d told me was unsettling to my mind, even if half of it was made up. Crystal Charm Stone indeed. I was inclined to agree with Timothy, such a thing was no more real that King Arthur’s sword. It smacked too much of nostalgia for a time forgotten and lost, the ‘golden age’ of man, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

  ‘Well, it’s a good story, Sandy,’ I began.

  He looked affronted and not a little hurt. ‘You don’t believe me?’

  ‘Of course I do! But, it all happened so long ago,’ I hastened to say. ‘Events become mythologized over time, and while there’s perhaps a nugget of truth buried deep inside the story, it’s probably grown out of proportion over time. But there’s something else about the tow... the broch.’

  He stood up, his mouth set in a straight line. ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you with my foolishness,’ he began formally.

  ‘Calm down,’ I said, tugging on his coat and making him sit back down. Christ, I sure had a knack for pissing people off. Sandy was the only person I could almost count as a friend on this island, I couldn’t afford to alienate him.

  ‘How would you explain all the excess magic you were carrying this afternoon, then?’ He was sulking. ‘I’m telling you, it came from touching the broch, where the Crystal Charm Stone still dwells.’

  It came from the power of the medallion, I was sure, but his mention of things kept in the tower was my opening.

  ‘Sandy,’ I said, then took a deep breath and plunged in. ‘Is it possible that a Normal person, a non-witch could be locked inside the Broch? With the Charm Stone, of course.’

  ‘A human being with no magic capabilities?’

  I nodded, but he was already shaking his head.

  ‘No Normal could withstand the power of the Clach Seun,’ he said with absolute confidence.

  I sighed. Him and his stupid legend of a magical stone. I wanted to scream at him – the stone didn’t exist, but my mother did, and if she wasn’t locked inside this mysterious tower, where could she be?

  ‘You mentioned an entrance into the Broch.’ I forced myself to speak slowly, not to let my frustration overflow. ‘Where is it?’

  He shook his head again. ‘That’s a secret.’

  ‘But do you know where it is? Sandy, this is really important,’ I said, the urgency making my voice tight. ‘I need to go inside, to see if my mother is being held captive there.’

  ‘She’s not,’ he said flatly.

  ‘I heard her voice,’ I told him. ‘It was coming from inside the broch.’

  ‘Impossible.’

  ‘But the story of the Crystal Charm Stone is? You’ve never even seen it!’

  He looked at me sadly, and continued to shake his head.

  ‘How do you know? Have you been there, inside it?’ Excitement was taking me anew. I was sure, without a doubt, that Sandy held the key.

  He stood up again. ‘Dara, your mother is not being held inside the Broch. She’s a Normal, isn’t she? I told you, there’s no way she could withstand the power of the stone, not without having years of exposure to build up her immunity,’ he said, kindness softening his voice. ‘And you cannot get inside the broch. Even if you knew how to, the Kin have enough Forbidding spells loaded over the entrance that you couldn’t possibly make it through.’

  WE WALKED back to the castle together, but worlds apart mentally. I had no way to tell what was on his mind, but mine was furiously working, analysing every word that had been said between us.

  He strongly believed in his family’s legend, that much was obvious, Sandy believed the tall tale to his very bones, this fairy-tale. I considered the story and wondered where the actual truth might lie, for as I had said, there was at least an ounce of truth in every historical legend passed down through the ages.

  I’d felt euphoria as the tower had risen before me, there was no denying that, the feeling of home-coming, of security and happiness. But how much of that feeling had been because of the medallion soaking up the unfettered magic of the island, away from the spells cast by the Kin around the castle which stymied the use of this power?

  How much had been because of my mother within the tower? The lightness of being I’d experienced may have come from my subconscious mind and its recognition of her proximity. Surely that was the explanation, the only sane explanation I could accept.

  I had to go back, get in there, find the entrance in order to free her.

  Before the castle’s oak door closed behind me, I looked out and away from the walls of the garden, and up into the lowering clouds. It was almost dark out, but tomorrow would be a fresh start.

  ‘Not long now, Mom,’ I whispered. ‘It won’t be long now.’

  AFTER LUNCH, a hurried affair consisting of chunks of homemade bread with hard cheese and a spicy condiment called chutney, Pauline told us we were expected to go to Professor Rasmussen’s classroom. Somehow Pauline knew all this, I never saw any schedules posted on a bulletin board or anything. When we got there, we all took a seat around a large lab bench.

  Whereas Professor Durand was a cranky, bitchy witch, Herr Rasmussen was another kind of scary. Tall and thin with gray hair that stood all around his head like electrified dandelion fluff, his pale eyes blazed out from behind rimless spectacles, sharp like flint and just as hard; I got the feeling that those eyes saw everything, even things that were meant to be unseen. His laboratory was as spotlessly clean as the white smock he wore.

  ‘Well, look at you all,’ he said while we took our seats at the lab benches. He had an odd Nordic accent I couldn’t quite place. ‘Another fine
set of young witches.’

  He was beaming around the room as he spoke; his smile softened the effect of his eyes. ’But there are seven this year, now that is an interesting occurrence.’

  I slouched on my stool to stay out of his firing range after suffering Durand’s attack, yet I knew there was little I could do but bear it. Yes there were seven, and it was my fault. I tensed my shoulders in preparation. I could feel him staring at me, those intense eyes honing in on me.

  ‘You,’ he said. ‘Ms. De Teilhard. You are the little witch from across the ocean, that is correct?’

  I looked up at him and nodded. My jaw was set in resignation. Let him torture me. He would eventually lose interest if I didn’t play into his hands. Show no fear, I told myself.

  ‘Oh yes, the daughter of Jon de Teilhard, I know him well, from various Councils we have served on,’ Rasmussen continued, his manner very chatty and disarming. This didn’t put me at ease, not at all but instead caused me to tense further for I had watched Hank the cat back home play with his mice so I was well-versed in all the feints and games of a torturer. I was expecting the worst. ‘And the charming Cate, she is your mother? You do not have the resemblance to her so much.’

  ‘No,’ I said, slowly. ‘She is not my mother.’

  I head a low titter run through the classroom. My ears were starting a slow burn as I heard the dreaded word bastard whispered.

  ‘Ah, yes, yes, yes of course! You are the half-blood Witchling, are you not? Yes, born on the wrong side of the blanket, as they say in English, eh?’

  I stared at him as he winked and smiled, as if he didn’t even realize how he was insulting me, bringing up my illegitimacy in a room full of Kin, where personal blood lines mattered so much.

  I nodded again, barely. ‘That’s right.’

  He must have heard the increased muttering from the others at the half-blood remark, for his face grew severe as he turned around to address them.