Abby the Witch (2 page)

Abby did not
remember fondly her decision, or lack thereof, to come to
Bridgestock. It had been on her first day as a fully fledged witch,
when she had still been keen about being given her 'area', her
territory to set up and become the resident witch of.
She'd thought she'd get somewhere nice and close,
somewhere local, perhaps within an easy broom’s flight of her
parents.

But, no, the
Crone had had something special for her.

Once a witch
was given her territory, she was supposed to be bound to it for
life. It would become her lifeblood, her reason for living. It was
a witch’s duty to care for her hemlock, town, vale, or city, to
ensure its history would be great and yet good. But unfortunately,
as she was going to find out, her area would have a festering wound
in its side, something horrible that had changed its history and
usurped its people, turning them bigoted, aggressive isolationists
– and that ever-fresh wound was the Witch Ban. And, if it was a
witch's duty to ensure that her city remained on a path of good,
then how in the pleck was she supposed to change the
Witch Ban? How in the world could she care for a town that shunned
her very existence?

Abby had not
known then how very impossible her task would be

If Abby had
had a choice in the matter, or knowledge of the Ban and its
effects, she would never have come. But Abby was too young and
naive to know of the Ban, and incapable of picking her own
territory anyway. A witch’s territory was decided for her by the
senior witch of the coven – the Crone.

In Abby's case
it was Ms Crowthy. Ms Crowthy had pulled her aside at the clan
meeting and peered at her for a good minute through the
moonlight.

'Something
special for you, Miss Gail. Yes, I think you need something
different, something difficult.'

Abby had
stared back, stared right into the railroading gaze of the Crone. A
stupid thing to do, really; you don't meet the eyes of a
fully-fledged crone without the protection of a half-metre of
frosted glass. She'd had a headache for at least a week
afterwards.

'You got a
problem, young Abby: your destiny ain't in these hills, and it
ain't an easy one. I consulted the waters this morning when I was
drawing up the assignments… I saw something interesting about you,
very interesting. There was a storm in my tea cup, child, and I'd
say there's a storm in your future too. One of them big ones. I saw
my tea leaves beating around in that cup all wild and loose, and I
said to myself this has something to do with young Abby. You're
all loose, child, you need to be tied down to something
concrete, something hard. Your destined even, I think.'

Abby had just
nodded. A skilled witch didn't need to look at the way the tea
leaves settled in the bottom of an empty cup to read the future. If
she knew her trade, and the Crone was the best witch in all the
mountains, then she could just look at the way the leaves floated
to pique her second sight. It was in the way they moved. You
can't predict the movement of time by staring at a stationary
object, at least not effectively. The gushing waters of a stream,
the whipping clouds above, the way a scarf floats to the ground –
these were far more effective. After all, telling the future isn't
so much about what happens, but 
how
 it
will happen.

So Abby had
sucked in her lips and directed her frightened eyes just over the
Crone's shoulder. Whatever she was going to be told would have to
happen.

'You are going
away, Miss Gail.'

'Away?' Abby
had shot a hesitant look at the other young witches still milling
about the fire and chatting. 'Where?' Away sounded like it would be
at least a day's broom flight, she'd thought.

'Bridgestock
City, on the north coast of the Westlands.'

'Ha?' That had
been the best thing Abby could think of at the time. She had a
vague idea of geography. There was her mountain village, then the
several villages around her, then a couple more that
were really far away. Westlands, she'd heard from the
baker's daughter, was at least as far as the ends of the Earth, if
not further.

'I'll give you
a map, child, to help you find it.'

Gosh, it
sounded like it would be at least two day’s solid flying, Abby had
thought through a large gulp.

'Now I'd only
fly at night, and keep yourself high so as to avoid unwanted
attention from rambling villagers.'

Three day’s
flight then?

'You take that
Charlie with you; you'll need a good head up around your shoulders,
even if it isn't your own.'

Four days?

'Now as soon
as you get down from the Mountains, I suggest you book yourself a
ticket on the train, dear. It's quite a penny, but you'll be too
tired to fly all that way. I've left the money at your mother's
– don't go spending it on herbs and lucky charms, you
hear?'

Abby had
nodded dumbly, her brain giving up on measuring her impending
journey in broom-flight days.

'Now when you
get to Bridgestock you'll have to make your own way setting up your
business and all. The last witch there… well…ain't there no longer.
And they haven't had one in those parts for a good long year. Don't
let that put you off. Persist, child, they'll need you soon
enough. You'll have something very important to do in that city,
something big. You'll be stopping something, I shouldn't
wonder, and fixing something, and making somethings never be
entirely. And that should be a lot of hard work.'

Abby had
listened in a daze as the Crone had filled her in on various other
details of what to do in Bridgestock. Abby's brain had closed down
for the most of it, and even now, with the benefit of actually
living in Bridgestock, she still couldn't remember half the advice.
Most of it had been along the lines of stay away from boys: boys in
taverns, boys on the ports, boys on the streets, and, above all,
boys in competition for your affection. There's nothing worse than
a love triangle – love's never meant to be geometric.

One tiny
snippet of the conversation, however, burned in her mind just as
strongly as when the Crone had uttered it with a sideways glance at
the full moon. 'One other thing, young Abby. Witches… well they…
what I mean to say is, you won't be exactly popular. You
see, witches are banned in Westlands, especially in
Bridgestock.'

And now, with
both her feet firmly on the tessellated streets of Bridgestock,
Abby was living the Witch Ban.

Unpopular. Unpopular? Witches were
hated
. Her
entire train carriage had emptied when she'd cheerily told them she
was a witch and had offered to fix an old gentleman's snore. The
man in question had actually growled at her as he'd left. Then
there'd been the incident in the port town of Halit when she'd
rescued that cat from the tree. The child who'd owned the cat had
burst into tears and the mother had actually chased Abby down the
street taking swipes at her with an, obviously non-magical,
broom.

Perhaps the
scariest incident, however, had been with the guards on the ferry
that had taken her to Bridgestock. A contingent of Royal Guards
from the Palace had boarded on official Royal duty and had checked
each passenger for 'contraband'. When the Captain of the Guard had
reached her, he'd leaned down – eyes taking in her outfit, cat, and
broom – and had brought his face in barely 20 centimetres from her
own.

'Are you a
witch, youngin'? '

'N-n-no.'

'Cause if you
is a witch, we'll throw you overboard.'

That had been
her first experience of the Guards, but certainly not her last. The
Guards were vicious, mindless bullies who received direct orders,
not from the Queen, but from the biggest bully of all – the
Colonel. Abby did not know much of him, just that his hate for
witches ran so deep it seemed to infect even the walls of the
city.

When she'd
finally made it to Bridgestock, for one reason or another, she'd
found herself in the roughest looking area she'd ever seen.
Granted, she only had a particularly mean section of pine forest
back home to compare it to, but this section of Bridgestock
completely trumped the wolf dens and pine-needle covered cliffs she
could conjure in her memory.

It was dark
and damp like the back of Ms Crowthy's laundry, and it smelt of sea
air, disturbed dirt, and animal fat. The houses were all packed
together with barely a space between them. Some of them were built
directly into the great stonewalls that were cut into the hill of
Bridgestock and which were mounted, layer by layer, up to the
palace beyond.

It was cramped
and stifling. There were no plants to speak of, save a suspect
green mould that covered the gutters. No animals either, despite
that terrible smell, except the occasional harsh call of the
gulls.

She hadn't
planned on staying. Ms Crowthy had warned her about 'the slumps'.
She said they were very terrible places, and that if Abby were to
find herself in one, she should definitely hit anyone who spoke to
her over the head with her broom, especially boys. Abby
had thought of this advice for a moment as she’d huddled next to a
wall watching some of the largest, most menacing men and women she
had ever seen walk past, and concluded that if she
even tapped somebody with her broom around these parts,
they'd reply in kind with a sledge hammer.

She would
later find out, or learn by experience rather, that the people of
Bridgestock were a confused lot. It wasn't that they were not nice
or friendly to each other; she had witnessed remarkable generosity
between them. However they were quick to hate, quicker to judge,
and quickest to shun. It was as if the license to freely despise
witches had enabled other derogatory views to take root. South
Islanders, Eastlanders, roamers, desert people, Elogians – each day
the list would grow.

In terms of a
festering wound in the side of her city – the Witch Ban seemed to
have been the initial blow. It allowed the hate to settle and
disperse. And in terms of Abby fixing this, finding a way to
retract the Ban and sooth the years of hatred, she didn't have a
hope. She was one witch in a city of people that, if they found out
she was among them, would eliminate her completely.

So, for the
most part, six years after her arrival, Abby Gail had settled into
Bridgestock in the only way she could – by pretending she was not a
witch at all. It always continued to be hard; every time a child
whispered that word to its mother as they passed her in
the street, every time an old lady or a passing fisherman looked
sideways at her broomstick and black cat, and every time a Royal
Guard gave her a narrowed-eyed stare, she could feel the hate and
it hurt. Abby couldn't help looking like a witch, mostly of course
because she was, in fact, a witch. And maybe she didn't have the
traditional warts and pointy hat - but witches have an aura, and
that she simply could not hide.

'I thought you
said we could go home!' Charlie glared at her from the base of a
tree.

'I never said
anything of the sort. I have to work, Charlie – that's how we eat,
in case you've forgotten.' Abby squeezed out a sponge and glanced
up at the mottled-grey and navy-blue sky.

'But, Abby,
it's blowing a gale and just look at the sky! It's going to split
in two any moment and drown us all.'

'It's only mid
afternoon,' Abby looked around quickly to check no one was
watching, and drew a quick protective charm in the suds on the pane
of glass she was working on. Just a bonus the residents who
employed her to wash their windows received… not that they knew it.
'Trust me, this storm won't hit 'til at least quarter-past-seven.
Once I finish up with Mrs Hunter's windows, we can head home with
plenty of time to spare.'

'Mrs Hunter?
How can her windows be dirty again?'

'They were
never really dirty to start with,' Abby said quietly. Mrs Hunter
was her most regular client, and if it weren't for the old dear,
Abby would have starved years ago.

'You know, I
think that lady is onto something,' Charlie fitfully crossed in
front of the tree, trying to find a spot out of the wind, 'she's
always got you over and you always manage to do a really good job,
even reaching the top windows on your broom – what if she suspects
you're a witch?'

Abby scratched
at a little patch of stubborn dirt. 'Of course she doesn't. Mrs
Hunter is simply a sweet old dear who needs a friend. What with her
son in the Navy and her husband dead, I think she just wants
company in that huge old house. And I just happen to be company
that also washes the windows. And I'm always careful to use the
boom only when I know no one is watching. Give me some credit,
Charlie.'

Charlie tilted
his head to the side and shook it disparagingly. 'And what about
that bracelet you fixed, you said it was
magic? Strong magic. What do you think an old diddy is
doing with something like that? Don't you think it might be a
trap?'

Abby paused
and took a hurried breath. Charlie sure was making her irritable
today. What with this wind and Abby's constant niggling sense that
something was on the horizon – she didn't need to be distracted by
Charlie's conspiracy theories. Not that Abby hadn't thought them
herself, that was. 'I don't think it's a trick… I think she just
thought it was a trinket…. Look I don't know, Charlie, sometimes I
do think she knows I'm a witch and she doesn't care…' Abby stared
despondently into the sparkling glass.

'Oh right, of
course she doesn't care – she's only a rich old lady
living on Esquire street with all the other rich
fascists who ruined our lives! And what about all those teas
you take her – that's suicide, Abby, she's bound to be onto
us.'

'She asked for
them, Charlie…. And it felt good to do something vaguely witchly
for once.