The Promise Witch Read online

  “Tell the horses,” said Magda, dragging Mup to the vardo.

  When it became obvious that Mup didn’t know what to do, Magda shook her head.

  “Haven’t you ever told a storm which way to travel? Good grace, your aunt really was determined to waste you, wasn’t she? Here!” She thrust Mup close to the swirling, gusty face of one of the horses. “Think of your route, then breathe the knowledge into the horse’s nose.”

  The horse blinked stormy eyes at her. Mup leaned tentatively closer. It huffed a breath that smelled of pine forests in the rain. What do I smell of? wondered Mup. She hoped she smelled nice as she breathed gently into the horse’s nostrils.

  The horse sniffed curiously. Then it inhaled a full, deep, powerful breath.

  Mup felt all the air being taken from her lungs, and with it she felt a clear, bright certainty pass between them. The horse shook its cloudy head, and stamped its lightning foot, ready to go.

  “Good,” said Magda, and she pushed Mup up the steps and slammed the door, just as the vardo shivered to life.

  Mup caught a brief glimpse of Crow, fuming at the table. Then Magda lifted the pendant, said the word and the world swirled up around her.

  There was a surge of shadow just as Mup’s world shut down. A dark thing streaked across the roof, and something leapt with her into the horrible confines of her glass prison.

  Mup was afraid to move. She was afraid to speak in case Magda heard her voice.

  There was definitely someone inside the pendant with her. She no longer fitted smoothly like smoke against the sides. She could no longer twine gracefully around herself.

  “Grey girl?” she whispered, pushing uncomfortably, trying to shoulder some room.

  I am here.

  The voice echoed inside Mup’s mind. Not the grey girl’s usual halting rusty voice, but a deeper, more powerful tone. Frightening.

  “Are … are you inside my head?”

  Not exactly. We share the same space.

  “It’s very uncomfortable.”

  There was a rippling sensation, as if the grey girl had shrugged.

  “Can you get me out of here?” whispered Mup.

  In a way.

  In a way? Mup wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that.

  Are you brave?

  Mup was very tempted to say no. But she didn’t really get the chance. She felt something like two arms snake around her. She heard the grey girl’s rusty voice hiss in her ear, “Hold on.” And she was pulled – sploot – like a cork from a bottle.

  The little grey girl steadied Mup as she got her bearings.

  A huge ceiling of stars sailed overhead. The ground was hard and curved. It thrummed slightly beneath her feet.

  They were on top of the vardo!

  “I can see through my legs!” cried Mup. “I can see through all of me!”

  Realizing that she was yelling at the top of her voice, she clapped her hand over her mouth. Overhead, the stars continued to sparkle. The tornado horses continued rushing for the horizon. Beneath her feet the vardo shivered quietly as it journeyed through the air. No one came storming out onto the porch to see what the noise was.

  “No one can hear you,” rasped the grey girl. “No one sees you. You’re a ghost.”

  “Am I dead?” asked Mup, whispering this time.

  The grey girl shook her head.

  “Where’s my body?”

  “Inside the pendant.”

  “I’m all grey. Why aren’t I golden and sparkly like in the ghost place?”

  “Your spirit did not break from your body, like it did in the ghost place. It is still attached. You feel the connection?”

  Mup closed her eyes, she searched for a feeling of connection. “I feel it,” she whispered. There was a sensation in her chest, as if an invisible thread was pulled tight there, a thread that stretched between Mup’s heart and… Mup followed the thread with her mind. It stretched down into the vardo: down into the pendant that swayed at Magda’s neck, inside which Mup’s body lay curled like a nut in its shell, still breathing, still warm, still alive – but empty.

  “I’m outside my body.”

  “Yessssss.”

  “My body is inside that tiny pendant.”

  “Yesssss.”

  “Oh, I don’t feel good.”

  The grey girl caught her and laid her, light as thistledown, onto the roof of the vardo. Mup blinked up at the stars. She could feel Magda’s enchantment down there, gripping her body in a painful vice. At the same time, she could feel her spirit-body, barely a spider’s breath of weight, lying on the trembling roof of the vardo. Between them, the tenuous thread that held them together hummed like a guitar string.

  “I can’t imagine this is very good for me,” she whispered.

  The grey girl wagged her head. Agreement? Disagreement? Uncertainty?

  Mup chose not to ask.

  For the first time she noticed the strain on the girl’s face. The dullness of her eyes.

  “Are you sick, Girl?”

  “Yes. Long way from home. I feel bad.”

  “I’m sorry. Thank you so much for staying to help me and Crow.”

  The girl’s face pinched to that mask of hate so familiar to Mup.

  “Minion hurts children,” hissed the girl. “We will stop her.”

  “Yes,” said Mup, struggling to sit. “Yes, we will.”

  She took the grey girl’s hand, and they sat facing each other on the roof of the vardo, ghost to ghost under the stars. Mup thought deeply for a long time. The grey girl patiently waited.

  “Can we fly when we’re spirits, Girl? Can we travel?”

  “Travel?” The grey girl frowned. “Like … in the ghost place?”

  “I don’t know. Is that travelling? I meant more like could we—”

  Before Mup could finish her question the grey girl tightened her grip on Mup’s hands, flipped backwards off the roof and dived out of the world.

  There was a sickening shooting sensation: the sense of the grey girl being pulled rapidly backwards through space. She had her arms clamped tight around Mup, and so Mup was carried with her.

  They landed on their backs in pitch darkness.

  Mup froze for a moment, a little terrified that she was all alone. Then the grey girl sat up beside her and their surroundings were illuminated by the faint glimmer of their combined ghost light. Mup felt the thread in her heart very clearly now – as if it had been stretched even tighter. It was an unpleasant, panicky feeling.

  The grey girl’s face loomed over hers. She was slightly more luminous than she had been in the vardo. Her face no longer as pinched and dull.

  “You look a bit better,” croaked Mup.

  The girl’s concerned expression implied that Mup, perhaps, looked worse.

  Clutching her chest, Mup sat. “Where are we?” She peered around in the dim light. “The oubliette? Why would you bring me here?”

  The girl shrugged. “Here is where I start,” she said simply. “Here is where I always start.”

  “Well … OK. I need to find my mam and dad, though.”

  The girl looked up. Far overhead was a distant coin of illumination. Mup shuddered. Naomi had explained to her that this was one of the ways raggedy witches had punished people. They would lower them into the oubliette through a hole in the ceiling, and leave them there to die. That distant light must be the hole.

  “Let’s get out of here.” With an enormous effort, Mup got to her feet, and flew towards the light. The grey girl slowly followed.

  They emerged through the grating of a shored-up drain and into a neglected garden.

  Mup stumbled in the open air. It was very difficult to do anything at all. Mup honestly thought that without the grey girl’s support, she would have just stopped moving.

  “Feels like I’m wading through jelly,” she gasped.

  “You are a long way from your body,” muttered the girl, gripping Mup’s elbow. “Not good when you’re still alive.”
<
br />   “Where are we?” asked Mup. “What is that dreadful noise?”

  Supporting each other, the two girls followed the noise through a series of arches, down a series of corridors, into a warmly lit hall. Tipper was sitting at the bottom of some steps, howling his little doggy head off. Behind him, Marty and Grislet sat tear-stained and glum.

  “Tipper!” gasped Mup, stumbling towards him. “Tipper, it’s me!”

  At the sight of Mup, Grislet rose to her feet. “Marty,” she jabbered, pointing a shaking finger. “Marty … look…” Her brother continued to stare sadly at his feet.

  Tipper kept on howling. Mup and the grey girl had to cover their ears.

  “TIPPER!” yelled Mup. “CAN YOU PLEASE STOP THAT RACKET!”

  “I can’t stop howling, Mup! I’m’s sad ’cos you is deaaaaaad.”

  “We know,” mumbled Marty. “You don’t have to keep telling us.”

  “But, Marty…” stammered his little sister. “L-look…”

  “I’m not dead, Tipper!” yelled Mup. “Can’t you see me?”

  “Of course I can see you, Muuuuup,” howled Tipper. “You’re standing right there!”

  “What?” Marty’s eyes snapped up. “Who are you talking to?” he asked Tipper. “Who are you pointing at?” he asked his little sister.

  “It be the princess,” said his sister, her face all aglow with wonder. “She be a ghost!”

  “I don’t have much time,” gasped Mup, battling the increased pressure on her heart.

  “How does she look?” asked Dad, peering sympathetically at the wall by Mup’s head.

  “Not good,” murmured Doctor Emberly, lifting Mup’s ghostly eyelid. “You’ve travelled too far from your body, my dear. It’s not doing you any good at all.”

  “Then stop wasting time and let me talk to Mam and Dad!” gasped Mup.

  “Of course.” He moved aside.

  Behind him, Mam’s arms were crossed as tight as her frown. She was barely keeping herself in check. “Why can’t we see her, Doctor?”

  “Well, she’s not actually a ghost, you see? She’s more like a fetch, or a—”

  “But we see that one!” cried Dad, gesturing to the grey girl.

  “Ah, yes,” said Emberly, eyeing the wary spectre. “Because she is a ghost … I think. Actually, I’m not sure what she is. She might—”

  “Doctor!” snapped Mam.

  “Yes! Sorry! The point is, it appears our disembodied young hero is visible only to the very young, or to dogs.”

  “The point is,” growled Mup, “I haven’t much time and Crow is still stuck in that vardo with his dreadful mother.”

  “As are you, dear,” Doctor Emberly gently reminded her. “You are only home in spirit, you know.”

  Black spots danced before Mup’s eyes. She grabbed her chest, as the grey girl lowered her to the floor.

  “She’s after falling down!” cried Grislet.

  “Tell Mam,” Mup gasped to Emberly, “I don’t know where Magda has us. Tell … tell her I’m going to try find out. OK?”

  “You need to go back now, my dear girl. Please. Before you do any damage.”

  Grislet pushed forward through the surrounding adults. She took Mup’s ghostly hand. “Marty told Mam what he done,” she whispered, her big golden eyes gazing down into Mup’s fading ones. “He told her it weren’t proper, to leave you struggling. He said he wouldn’t have felt right down in his soul, had he let you turn to dust, and that he was glad he’d helped you in the end.”

  Mup looked past the small girl’s face to where her brother flushed and scowled in the background.

  “He also told our mam she should let me go to your school.”

  The pain in Mup’s chest was very bad now. Everything was getting black around the edges.

  “What… What did your mam say to that, Grislet?”

  “She raged. And then she said alrightee. And then she cried … but do you know, I think she was easier in herself after. I think… I dunno… I think it were like she felt right down in her soul.”

  “That’s … great … I…”

  There was a horrible fizzing feeling. Grislet’s face filled with concern. The world doubled and trebled and blurred. Mup felt like someone was shaking her. “I’m going to throw up!” she yelled. And – pop! – she was inside the vardo, Magda staring at her in suspicion, the pendant in her hand.

  Bravery

  Mup blinked around her. The vardo was just as she’d left it.

  Crow watched intensely from his motionless place by the table.

  She smiled at him. His eyes smiled back.

  “Where were you?” frowned Magda. “Why did it take you so long to materialize?”

  “I was in there,” said Mup, motioning to the pendant. “Where else would I have been?” She looked at Magda in surprise. “You’ve changed your clothes!”

  “I’ve enchanted my clothes,” muttered Magda.

  “You look like Clann’n Cheoil.”

  “Yes, well. I was Clann’n Cheoil for long enough. The horses wish to land. It must be the next step in the journey. I don’t want to draw any more attention than necessary.”

  Crow’s halting voice croaked from behind them. “Your eyes will … give you … away.”

  Magda spun to him in amazement. “I gagged you! How can you talk?”

  Crow glared triumphantly. “Going to have to … work … a bit harder … Mam.”

  “Hush!” cried Magda.

  Crow’s mouth snapped painfully shut. But Magda had begun to look a little desperate, and his eyes shone with glee.

  “Crow’s right, you know,” said Mup. “Your eyes are all black. Besides, won’t people notice Crow’s dad? He’s hardly what you’d call inconspicuous.”

  “Fat lot you know,” muttered Magda, and she flung open the vardo door and stalked outside.

  Mup was astonished to find herself blinking in sharp morning sunshine. Only moments before she had been in the lamp-lit castle. Had time passed while she travelled between the two locations?

  On the porch, Magda spoke quietly to the creature. “Good morning, my love.”

  Mup realized the witch had changed his appearance too! He looked like nothing more alarming than a tall man, seated on the driver’s bench of the vardo.

  Is this what Crow’s dad looked like? wondered Mup, coming out to look at him.

  Yes. There could be no doubt of it. The man’s dark eyes, his curling black hair, the sharp hawkishness of his handsome face: this was how Crow would look as a grown-up. This was Toraí Drummaker of Clann’n Cheoil.

  But there was no hint of personality in Toraí’s face. He was, as the creature had been, slack and slightly troubled, his entire attention focused on guiding the horses. A hot breeze lifted his long dark hair as he brought the vardo in to land. Warm scents closed around them: barbecued meat, fried dough and sugar, livestock. Mup realized with a start that they had landed at the edge of a market fair. The vardo wasn’t even slightly out of the ordinary in this colourful, teeming place.

  The waft of hot bread made Mup’s stomach growl. “I’m starving.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” muttered Magda. “Just get out, find the path and get back in.”

  The woman was sweating and sleepless-looking, and Mup could see just how hard she was having to work in order to keep all the glamours going. Crow’s dad’s appearance; Magda’s new disguise; the spell restraining Crow; the glamour that hid the vardo from Mam – all of them were starting to take their toll.

  Crow chuckled. “Stretched … a bit thin … Mam?”

  Something snapped in Magda. She spun and pointed at her son. All the glamours shivered as the witch channelled everything into a single zap of magic. There was a crack and squawk, and instead of Crow sitting at the table there was now an iron cage and in it a raven, its beak bound with leather. “There,” hissed Magda. “How do you like that?”

  But Crow’s eyes were triumphant over the gag. Realizing something was wrong, Ma
gda straightened. She looked down at herself. “No,” she whispered. “Why…?”

  She was no longer dressed in the colourful clothes of Clann’n Cheoil. She was no longer even dressed as an ordinary woman from the mundane world. She was, as she had always been under it all, a raggedy witch – stark and imposing and severe in black.

  Magda seemed to notice the silence behind her. She turned. The bustling market crowd was frozen in shock, staring at the raggedy witch who had just appeared in the doorway of the recently landed vardo. Crow’s dad was back to his misshapen self, a hulking creature by the witch’s side.

  “You lost concentration,” said Mup. “They see you as you really are.”

  Magda stepped out onto the porch. The crowd contracted slightly, and she smiled a bitter smile. “That’s right,” she whispered. “You remember your place.”

  A tomato flew from nowhere and hit her in the face.

  The crowd gasped. Some of them shrank back. Some of them turned away in fear. But Mup also saw people step forward. She saw people stand tall. And the more people who stood tall, the more others seemed to lose their fear. Magda – straightening slowly and wiping tomato juice from her cheek – saw the same. For the first time, Mup glimpsed uncertainty in the witch’s face.

  “Your kind isn’t wanted any more!” shouted someone from the back of the crowd.

  There was a rumbling of agreement. “Get out of here!”

  Magda’s face hardened. She allowed lightning to thread her fingertips. “Make me,” she said.

  By Mup’s side the creature moaned. His troubled eyes pleadingly roamed the crowd.

  Mup placed her hand on his bulky shoulder. “I’m scared for them, too,” she whispered. Even as she spoke, she saw people in the crowd lift their hands in response to Magda’s threat. She saw lightning and fire leap to their fingers.

  Almost half the community stepped forward in defiance.

  They’re so brave, thought Mup, looking into the sea of determined faces. But these people had no idea who Magda was. They had no idea how powerful she was. Or maybe they just don’t care any more. Maybe they just refuse to spend the rest of their lives bowing.

  Snarling, Magda raised her crackling hands.

  Mup clawed her own hands. “Leave them alone, Magda.”