Abby the Witch (8 page)

Clutching at
the body with both her arms, trying to hurl it across her broom
while keeping Charlie tucked safely next to her chest, she closed
her eyes against the wall of water.

The ocean
roared.

Desperately,
with only her legs to steer, she shot out of the water, finally
securing the man in front of her.

She angled her
broom up, trying to escape the slap of the waves. Up and up and
before she knew, Abby had flown through the break in the
clouds.

There was a
strange moment, a strange rushing, a strange quiet. The world
seemed to tip: to slant like a framed picture being corrected
against the wall. And then things became very cold indeed.

But as quickly
as it had begun it was over. The break in the clouds disappeared,
and the storm rolled back in even angrier than before.

Back was the
drenching rain, the roar of the wind, and slam of the surf.

She had to get
him to safety, Abby reminded herself, pushing all wonder from her
mind.

Abby held on
with all her might, willing the man not to be dead, or not to die
before she could get him ashore. She begged her hands not to lose
their grip as she headed for the cliffs, rising higher as the waves
began to burst up from the ocean like hungry hands.

The ocean
wanted the man back and was more than a little angry she'd snatched
him from it.

Witches did
not get along with the sea.

Just as a huge
wave descended from behind, Abby raised the broom sharply and swung
wildly towards the cliffs. She forced the broom into a vertical
rise to climb quicker. The considerable weight of the man, and poor
Charlie squeezed between him, knocked into her and she almost let
go of the broom completely.

But with one
arm around his middle, the other holding desperately to the broom,
she reached the top of the cliff.

She didn't
even bother to look if she was alone. Bone-weary, numb, and close
to falling, she crashed into the soaked ground, letting the man
roll off beside her.

Abby had
managed, at least, to get the man ashore. The storm had not,
apparently, been able to rob her of that.

~~~

It was odd
waking up in an unfamiliar place – especially for a witch. Witches,
what with one thing and another, are usually blessed with a very
keen sense of place. They'll know when someone has been rooting
around their sock drawer and when the fine china cups have been
moved. If someone had broken in to eat their porridge and ruffle up
their fine cotton sheets, they'd have guessed it about two metres
up the garden path.

That's why it
is very dangerous to steal from a witch. Not only would she know
exactly what you stole and probably where you hid it, but her sense
of inner justice would have her round your mother's place dobbing
you in before you could even pull the stocking from off your
face.

There was a
disadvantage of having such a keen sense of place though. When
something moved, and most things make it their habit to, a
witch feels it. And when it's something big, when you've
lost your house in a fire or have woken up on your neighbour's
haystack half-drunk and covered in pie – a witch really
feels it. It's like a train running over her toes or a house
falling flat on your face – something memorable and quite
impossible to ignore.

So when Abby
regained consciousness every bone in her body tingled like it had
been set on fire then doused in a bucket of ice-cold water. It was
worse, far worse than the time her house had been buried under
an unusually deep rift of snow, or the time Ms Crowthy had
accidently set fire to their woodshed.

From the tips
of her toes to the very last frazzled hair on her head – Abby knew
something was very wrong indeed.

Sure enough,
when she opened her eyes, Abby was greeted by the sight of an
unfamiliar ceiling. It was wooden with huge supporting struts the
size of tree trunks running along its width. There was something
decidedly rustic about it; she could even see a section of thatch
popping through from the outside.

The smell of
honey and milk warming over a fire gently filled the air. Abby
prided herself on her unusually keen sense of smell, and with her
mind racing to find the answer to where she was, it was a pleasant
distraction.

She fluttered
her eyes closed again, trying to concentrate with all her might on
her jittery witchly senses. Why did she feel so off? Why did she
feel so very wrong? Was there something she was meant to be doing?
Some other place she was meant to be?

Her reverie
was interrupted by a shuffling sound, and she opened her eyes just
as a kindly voice said, 'hh hello there, dear, you've finally woken
up then!'

Abby didn't
jump, though her heart felt like it had popped out of her rib cage
with fright. She swivelled her head until a warm ruddy face came
into view.

A woman with
greying black hair and watery brown eyes was peering down at her, a
decidedly motherly twist to her broad smile. 'I'm glad to see
you're awake– you've been sleeping nearly all the morning. That boy
of yours got up hours ago, but you just kept on sleeping merrily.
You must have got quite a chill from that storm last night, I'd
say. So here,' the woman whipped a steaming mug of honey and milk
in front of Abby, 'you just have a drink of this.'

It was an
information overload. Storm, boy, night – every word set off a huge
explosion of gut-wrenching recognition until Abby snapped up, her
brow slick with sweat. 'Where's Pembrake? Is he alright? The
storm! What happened? And where's my cat?' Abby realised
with a desperate sweep of her head that Charlie was nowhere to be
seen.

'Now, now,
now,' the woman sat heavily on the side of Abby's bed, her smile
morphing into a strict frown, 'you just take it easy there, dear,
everything's alright. That cat of yours is curled up by the fire
purring like a putting engine.' The woman forced the mug into
Abby's hand and steered it up until she was forced to take a
sip.

'But,' Abby
swallowed the liquid quickly, glad for the warmth against her
parched throat, 'where-'

'Oh that boy
of yours is fine enough too. He's a strong one, I wouldn't wonder.
He'd hardly woken up and he was out of bed quizzing us about some
ship. But likes we said, we've never heard of no Royal
Blue.'

'What? But…. But it often docks in the bay – everybody knows
that.'

The old lady
peered down at Abby with crinkle-nosed confusion. 'Well I didn't
know, nor did me husband, Alfred, nor did any of the other
fisherman round these parts – and you'd think we would, dear. What
with us practically living on the bay and all.'

Abby opened
her mouth to protest further but stopped. The feeling was still
there curling around her body like a strangling jungle vine –
something was very, very wrong. She stared down into the swirling,
eddying mug of milk, willing the movement to help her understand
what on Earth was going on.

'He was like
you, dear, couldn't believe that we hadn't heard of her, kept on
asking if she's sunk and if the Captain had made it ashore. Why,
Alfred could see the boy wasn't going to get anywhere with us
just telling him there weren't no Royal
Blue around – so he's taken the boy out to the bay so he can
see for himself. Left me here to look after you, he did.'

'So Pembrake
is okay?' Abby held tight onto that knowledge; it was something
right in the swell of wrongness.

'Oh yes, good
strong lad you've got there miss.' The woman winked knowingly.

Except Abby
wasn't sure what it was the woman thought she knew. Then it dawned
on her. 'Oh no… we aren't…' she felt a hot blush take to the corner
of her cheeks.

'Oh really,'
the woman said disbelievingly. 'When Alfred found the two of you,
you was practically stretched on top of him you were. Alfred said
it looked as if you'd fought off the very sea to protect him then
fainted right there on the cliff. I said it was the sweetest thing
I'd ever heard. Young love is just so beautiful, me
dear.' The woman was speaking with such passion she'd clutched a
hand to her heaving bosom.

Abby shook her
head meekly, every loud warning from Ms Crowthy about being with
boys going off in her mind, her blush only growing deeper with
every breath.

'No need to be
embarrassed, child – I was young too once,' the woman sighed deeply
and fixed her eyes on a patch of stonewall longingly, before coming
back to herself and patting Abby's leg through the blanket.
'Anyhow, I'm sure they'll be back soon. You just rest here,' the
woman stood up and pulled the covers taut from where she'd been
sitting, 'and I'll go and fix you some soup and bread.'

With the woman
gone, Abby cast her eyes around the unfamiliar room intently,
looking for some clue of where she was. It was strange. It looked
like other houses in Bridgestock. But somehow, from the quaint
furnishings to the colour of her bedspread – things seemed
strangely old, almost as if the room was decorated to remind the
occupants of the past.

Abby pulled
her still warm mug closer into her chest, until she could feel the
warmth through her clothes, but the simple move was not enough to
ward off the chill that had been steadily spreading from her heart
since the woman had told her she had never heard of the Royal
Blue.

For the first
time in her life, Abby felt the impossible urge to look at a clock.
Most witches go from birth to grave without ever wondering once
what the time is. Ms Crowthy had often pointed out that witches
have the most accurate of internal clocks and shouldn't be
bothering with nonsense watches. Watches, after all, break and
witches rarely do. Plus, you can't be trusting no manmade timepiece
– it'd only go lying to you.

But Abby felt
this overpowering urge to look at a timepiece. A sundial, a watch,
a grandfather clock – it wouldn't matter, she just needed to know
the time.

Time,
strangely, was not a topic Ms Crowthy was fond of. The only lessons
Abby had ever had on it, had been hushed warnings delivered in
front of a blazing fire, as if the Crone had been worried time
would creep in on a cold night and kill them all.

It wasn't that
she was afraid of it, Ms Crowthy had sharply informed her, it was
that other people didn't fear it enough and that's what frightened
the socks off the old Crone. The most powerful stuff in the
universe, as she'd put it, and people just think they can catch it
in a clock and be done with it. Except you can't capture it, not in
a diary or a watch or a calendar, because while you are sitting
there and admiring the tiny amount of time you'd trapped,
the rest of time is roaring on behind you. And you miss
out. You lose 'perspective' Ms Crowthy had said, proud she'd found
a use for such a large word.

Things can
happen fast, slow, and all together immediately, and you wouldn't
know, because as far as you're concerned it took exactly 3 minutes
and 15 seconds for farmer Peaches' house to crumble to the ground.
You lose the quality of time when you quantify it, and in baking
your pie for exactly 45 minutes you might forget the rest of the
universe has gone through far more time, far more explosions and
crashes and bangs than you could possibly fit in your nightly diary
entry. You forget that time runs differently for every single
person, and yet, it is the one thing that binds us all
together.

So, Ms Crowthy
had concluded, don't be forgetting that time is the most powerful
stuff in the universe and don't you go messing with it.

Abby swallowed
hard and looked down at her hands. Why couldn't she shake the
feeling that she had broken that one golden rule? Why couldn't Abby
convince herself, sitting in this unfamiliar bed, in this
unfamiliar room, that everything was fine, that whatever was wrong
could be fixed with a long hot bath and a good lie down?

But most of
all, why couldn't Abby figure out what the time was? She was a
witch, for crying out loud, why couldn't she figure out whether it
was quarter-past-one in the afternoon on Tuesday the 1
^st
of April in the Year of the Rose or something else entirely.

~~~

'But,'
Pembrake looked at the calm, empty, bay and felt a shudder run
across his shoulder blades, 'where could she be?'

Alfred just
shook his head, biting down softly on his pipe with a comforting
smile. 'It'll be alright, son. Be sure, if a ship had sunk here
last night – we'd have known about it. We'd have all been out of
our houses running into that surf looking for survivors, you be
sure of that. But just look at the bay, look at them rocks
– nothing sank last night.'

Cold, aching
weight stretched through his limbs, threatening to pull his body
right through the wet sand like a meteor plunging from the
heavens. Where was his ship?

Alfred had
lent him clothes and, although the old man's shift stretched
tightly over Pembrake's body, he was glad at least that they were
dry. They were rough though, and Pembrake found himself itching at
his collar distractedly.

How could a
ship just disappear? Where was the crew, where was the Captain?

He caught the
old man looking at him with a wary side-glance, and Pembrake tried
for a thin-lipped smile. 'I don't understand.' he conceded,
gesturing to the barren beach.

'You did, ah,'
the old man paused to scratch his long grey beard, 'get knocked
out, son. Mind can do funny things-'

'I'm the
Commander of the Royal Blue,' Pembrake said coldly, 'and
I know she sank here last night.'

'Alright, but
you can sees for yourself, she ain't here now, what more do you
want?'

I want my ship
back, Pembrake thought viciously as he walked his eyes along the
small strip of sand that separated the cliff from the Knife Rocks.
He knew this section of beach, he used to walk along here with his
mother when he was a boy, he knew that funny-shaped rock that
looked like a lion's head, and the other perfectly level one where
he'd once had a picnic with Miss Patridge - he knew this beach and
yet he didn't know it. It should have had some sign of
the Royal Blue.