"What can we do?" I was screwed up in agony. "Oh, the pain . . ."
"Lake," said Puddy. "Head hurts . . . Left and down: hates water."
His words stuck in my fuddled, paining brain: "Lake . . . hates water . . ." Of course: clever toad. All witches avoid water like the plague and the stretch of lake lay to our left: I could see a glint of water in the direction Puddy had indicated. Gathering the others close once more, my stomach still contracting with pain, I crashed heedlessly through the bushes towards the stretch of water, tumbling at last down the steep bank to land us all splash! in the murky waters among the sear reeds and drowned twigs that littered its edge.
Not for nothing was this called the Dead Water, for nothing grew on or in it except the nastiest weeds. Even frogs, desperate for cool in the summer, eschewed its water, while in spring the shallowest puddle seemed preferable for their spawn. Long ago the lake had been fished-out and even restocking had failed, for the villagers said it was cursed by the drowned souls of a party of young men and women who had gone out on a raft for a dare on Beltane's Eve countless years ago and never returned. The raft had been found the following morning, caught in reeds at the edge, but of the dozen or so—the superstitious said thirteen—that had essayed the water there was no sign. Of course the villagers had gone out and dragged the depths with hastily made rope nets but these yielded nothing, and one intrepid fellow who had ventured the depths at the end of a line had burst to the surface with tales of huge snake-like leeches that had curled for him out of the watery dark and of a ring of dead bodies silently dancing among the tangled weeds of the deep, their white faces and open eyes full of the horrors of the drowned, and worms and bubbles rising from the open mouths that cried of devils and black magic. Certain it was now that no one would venture out on this black smoothness and I had seen none but the rash, unfearing wild pig ever drink from its waters when I had been out early for herbs.
Even now, stranded as we were among the shallows, me sitting in but two inches of water, Pisky bubbling up in his crock, which was bobbing up and down where I had dropped it, I had all the others clutched and clinging to my head and shoulders with beak, claw and damp feet rather than touch the waters.
"Pick me up, pick me up!" panicked Pisky.
"Help!" moaned Moglet.
"Let's up-an'-orf," croaked Corby.
"Not healthy," pondered Puddy.
All at once, of course.
I struggled to my feet, as much to escape their din as anything else, but then looked down with horror at the breeches I always wore, on our Mistress's instruction. I was damp from the waist down from sitting in the water and on the wet leather fat blue-grey worms crawled with open mouths, burrowing blindly for my naked skin. I struck out, brushing them back into the scummy water, only to feel them immediately fasten on my bare ankles. Stumbling to the bank I lay back against the sloping earth thrusting with panic at the evil things that still clung and sucked at my skin. Unexpectedly I was helped by Corby who fluttered from my shoulder and pecked at the slimy things with his beak, wiping them off into the sludge as a bird will clean his beak on a twig.
At last I was free and turned to struggle to the top of the bank when the pains struck us all again and we screeched and tumbled back towards the water. Desperately I clung to a gnarled tree root that jutted out above the water, my feet frantically scrabbling for a hold on the greasy earth, Pisky's bowl jammed under my chin, the others hanging on as best they could. Something made me look up and there a great bat-like shape blotted out the hazy light from a wisp-clouded harvest moon that rocked unsteadily through the trees, and with despair I realized that our Mistress had found us and was flying over our hiding place on Broom.
"She'll get us!" I screamed. "We'll never escape!"
This time I knew She would at last kill us and then throw our bodies into the black waters of the lake, and I could not think at all, only feel as the cramps clutched at me again and my terrified friends clawed and clung till I could feel the trickle of blood from torn shoulder-skin. I felt a sudden rush of stinking air as our Mistress swooped down on us and the smell of singed cloth overwhelmed even the stench of scummy water: a burning fragment from somewhere had landed on my arm and there was a smoulder of cloth which I beat at frantically as the witch misjudged her landing and soared away to approach from an easier angle.
I heard Puddy trying to say something, urgently for him, agonizingly slow for the rest of us in those few moments when everything—pain, fear, drowning, burning, death—was rushing upon us like a great, irresistible storm wind that will snap and crack even the most pliant tree in its fury.
"Can't get us surrounded by water . . ." but even as I understood and acknowledged what he was saying I knew I could not wade out into that lake of desolation and stand, helpless, while my flesh was sucked away from my bones by the unseen horrors that lurked beneath.
"Island somewhere," came Corby's hoarse voice, stirring into a sort of incredulous hope. "If you could wade out, Thing . . . Think it's over there to the left someways . . ."
I do not remember scrambling up the bank, scurrying through the thin belt of trees that lined the shore, searching ever for a darker shape on the waters, ducking automatically from the swooping thing that held off only because of the branches that hid us from full view. I do remember at last seeing a dark lump that rose from the water some hundred yards out and recall too the fear and pain that accompanied my wild splashings through the shadows; I remember that at one stage the water sucked greedily at my waist, at another my foot turned on a treacherous stone and slime rushed headlong into my open mouth, but that at last my feet found dry ground and I staggered free of the clutching waters to fall to my knees, shedding cat, bird, toad and fish's crock, and lie prone, crying my exhaustion.
The islet on which we found ourselves was only a scratch of ground barely ten feet long and half that wide with a stunted tree and a prickly bush for company: I looked back and the bank seemed an immeasurable distance away. Had I really crossed that stretch of water? I shivered with wet and cold and beside me Corby ruffled and rattled his feathers and Moglet tried to wipe herself dry against my ankles, mercifully leech-free: I supposed my wild splashings and the speed of our progress had hindered the creatures' blind seekings. For the time being, too, we were witch-free, but a massy heap of clouds raced up on the increasing wind that rattled the branches of the stunted tree above me and whispered in the bush to my right, fluttering the ivy that clung to the ground round our feet. I bent and straightened Pisky's bowl which was dangerously tilted and heard him mutter and cough as he rushed around backwards: "Horrid black stuff: chokes the lungs, black water does, not good for my gills. Oh, deary, deary me! If my great-grandfather could see me now . . ."
I put out my hand and stroked Moglet's damp fur. "Are we all right now?" she asked anxiously, purring a little to reassure us both.
Corby and Pisky were conversing in low tones. "Notice them trees?" I heard the bird mutter.
"And the ivy," said Puddy. "Should help."
"Wouldn't be a bad idea to form a ring, though," said Corby. "Can you remember any of that stuff? You know . . ."
"A little."
They turned to me.
"Best get into a circle and hold fast to each other: dip a finger in Pisky's bowl and touch his fin and toad here can do the same with a toe t'other side. Now, Thing dear, before it is too late . . ."
Hastily we arranged ourselves: me with Moglet and Pisky on either side, Corby and Puddy opposite. I did not question how or why for obviously these two knew something I did not.
"Now then, all close your eyes and empty your minds," said Corby urgently. "Let old Puddy and I do the thinking here, for this is what we knows. Go on, sharp about it! Listen to nothing save our words, our thoughts . . ."
"And don't let go," murmured Puddy. "Keep in touch . . ."
For a moment there was nothing as I knelt with closed eyes, listening to Corby muttering and Puddy coming in now and again with a single word, almost like the priest and congregation I had heard sometimes from outside the little church in the village. Then, as now, I did not understand what was being said, for it seemed to be in a language I had never heard, and yet in spite of this I felt a sort of strength flow back into my limbs and a string of hope seemed to circle between our points of contact; fingers, claws, paws and fins. I felt Pisky quieten under my touch and Moglet had ceased her trembling.
And then the pictures came into my mind.
A sunlit grove, whispering leaves, white berries, bearded faces with sad, dark eyes, a flashing knife and with all these an instinctive knowledge of great secrets, of ancient ways; between the mutterings something deeper and even more secret came from my left hand where Moglet's race-memory wandered back to an even earlier time where the dominant figure was female and the secrets were held only by women . . . On my right hand a golden sun, silk-embroidered cities, a great wall that wound like a snake; from somewhere else there was a rumble as the Sea-God stirred and cones of bright fire erupted on the hillsides bringing cliff and temple tumbling together; tall candles, a man kissing the cross-hilt of a sword—
"Hold fast, hold fast to that which is great, that which is good," came the message between us. "Keep your eyes closed, closed . . ."
Perhaps if I had not been reminded they were shut I should not have opened them just to see—
"She's coming again!" I screamed, jumping up and breaking the circle, and the others scattered as the great bat-like figure swooped down on us again, howling imprecations, only to veer at the last moment to avoid the tree, whose twisted branches defied a landing.
"A circle again, you dumb idiots!" yelled Corby, but the spell was broken and we were in disarray, all concentration gone, running hither and yon in the small space afforded us like rats terrier-struck in a pit. Again and again the figure dived down on us and in the end we stopped trying to escape and cowered between the prickly bush and the stunted tree clutching at anything to stop ourselves being scooped up off the island, up, up into her clutches.
Up? Or down? For suddenly it felt as though the island had turned upside down and we now hung by fingertip and claw from the strands of ivy as flies on a ceiling; I had Pisky's bowl under my chest and so great was the illusion of being topsyturvy that I remembered being amazed that the water from his crock did not pour all down my front.
But still She did not land, could not reach us, and I glanced up, or down, I was not sure which, and saw her hovering some twenty feet above, or below us, and I almost did not recognize her. She had grown incredibly old and ugly and was naked except for a few shreds and tatters that hung from her shoulders. And her belly—her belly was a huge, monstrous puffball of growth that rocked and swelled in front of her. Even as I watched in terrified fascination it seemed as though it were being struck like a great gong from within, a soundless blow that yet brought an answering scream from my Mistress.
"It is time!" she shrieked. "I give birth to my son, my monster, who shall rule you all! But I need blood, blood for him to suck, blood to bring him alive, and I will have it!" and she raised her arms and chanted a spell I remembered: the fire-bringing one, only this time much stronger and more vindictive than I had heard it when she had used it once or twice to relight our fire when the wood was too damp to do anything but smoulder. As we gazed up at her we saw her body redden with reflected flame and I glanced down to see flickers and sparks among the fallen leaves at my feet. Springing up I stamped frantically but all the time the ground was growing hotter and the stones started to glow like the embers of a fire, even as a tongue of flame licked the trunk of the twisted tree and ran up into the branches like a squirrel. Tearing off my cloak I flapped despairingly at the flames, and beside me Puddy and Moglet were leaping up and down squealing at the pain from singed paws; Corby had fallen on his back, feathers browning, and poor Pisky's bowl was steaming as he gasped away his life on the surface.
Then something inside me snapped, and I behaved like a mad thing, for the dreadful pains were twisting my guts again and I came outside myself with pain and stood like a creature of no substance and all substance and I was nothing and everything and had no power and all power. Stretching out my hands I gathered the flames into them and cooled them and rolled them into a living entity in my palms. Throwing back my head I stood as firm as a pillar of stone upon the ground beneath and opening my mouth I cursed the witch that hovered and swooped above us. Using no language and all language I cursed her into Hell and eternal fire, I cursed the monster she bore and wished it non-born; I cursed them living and dead and forbade earth, air or water to receive their bones. Then, gathering all my strength, I took the ball of fire that yet clung to my hands and flung it straight up into her face.
While I had been cursing her, she had dipped and wavered and I could see her shocked mouth and suddenly wary eyes. But as soon as the ball of fire left my hands she swerved away on Broom and then seemed to redouble her strength, as I collapsed like a pricked bubble on the stony ground, whimpering for the pain in my burnt hands. But at least the fire on the island was out, and the stones once more blessedly cool. The others clung to me and I felt Puddy spit into my burning palms and mutter something and at once they were soothed.
"Good try," croaked Corby, "but I'm afraid she's coming back . . ."
We all looked up at her then, waited for her to come down the inevitable last time, the time when we would have no strength, no reserves left. We were all brave now, I think, for there comes a time when death must be faced, and it is only the manner of the dying that matters. And as she rose to a greater height the better to gain momentum, then turned and bore down on us like a meteor, I felt strangely calm.