Ravensborough (16 page)

‘That’s absurd’, said Rupert. ‘Scarlett’s not a Pagan, she’s not even Avalonian.’

Nick shrugged. ‘I know it’s strange, but it has been shown to occur with particular objects. I can’t ever remember hearing of it happening to someone who wasn’t born here though.’

‘Well it’s open now’, I said ‘so what’s the problem?’

Nick put a hand out to the box and gently pulled the fabric away from the bundle. All of a sudden the lid slammed closed on his hand and he yelled out in pain. When he pulled his hand away from the box there was an angry red welt on his skin.

‘That box isn’t safe’, Rupert said standing up. ‘I think you should take it away right now.’

‘No’, Mum said. Her face was white but she looked fairly determined. ‘I think Scarlett should see if she can manage to do it.’

I looked at Mum incredulously. ‘Are you
crazy
?! Did you
see
what it did to Nick’s hand?’

‘I can totally understand if you don’t want to risk it Scarlett’, Nick said anxiously. ‘But if you could try, it might help us understand what the box is for.’

I liked and admired Nick, and his praise of my fledgling attempts at archaeology had made me proud. I didn’t want to look like a coward in front of him. Even though the mark on his hand did look really painful.

I steeled myself and opened the lid of the box. Putting my hand on the fabric, I eased the bundle out of the box and place it gently on the dining room table.

‘That’s it, this is dangerous.’ Rupert stood up abruptly and stormed out of the room. I looked at Mum to gauge her reaction, but she still looked intrigued.

The fabric was actually a small drawstring bag. Inside it was a heavy silver locket. It had a swirling engraving of a raven on the front of it, surrounded by flowers. I turned its heavy weight over in my palm, and on the back were engraved the words, ‘With This Charm I Protect, All That I Am Charged to Protect’. I handed it over to my Mum, who instantly dropped the locket. It fell with a clatter on the wooden floor.

‘It’s ice cold’, she breathed. ‘I can’t touch it.’

‘Well, Scarlett, do you feel comfortable keeping it?’

‘But aren’t they artefacts? I mean, don’t they have to go to a museum or something?’

‘They don’t work for anybody else; they want to belong to you. So they’re yours. It’s a Pagan site, so Pagan laws apply. Besides, as you noticed yourself, the box doesn’t match the rest of the site.’

‘But what is the locket for?’ I asked. It seemed strange to me that there would be such an elaborate plan for me to get the locket without it being important.

‘Your guess is as good as mine. Pagan jewellery isn’t my area of expertise. Lavendell or Aradia may be able to give you a better idea. They know a lot more than I do about magic. We could go over to them now if you wanted?’

I looked at Mum, who shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t know...Rupert probably wouldn’t think that it’s a good idea.’

‘Probably not,’ Nick conceded. ‘But now that we have the box open, Lavendell could probably give you an idea what the items inside are used for.’ He shrugged. ‘And you’ll probably meet her at some point anyway.’

I could see that Mum was torn. She didn’t want to do something that Rupert would disapprove of, but she didn’t want to offend Nick by refusing to see his family. ‘I suppose just talking about it wouldn’t be that bad,’ she said warily.

Rupert wasn’t exactly thrilled to find out where we were going, but he didn’t object.

Lavendell’s apothecary shop was closed by the time we got there, which was a pity because I was curious to see what it was like. A small set of steps were squashed between two buildings. Nick led us halfway up the steps and, like Gethan’s house, a door led off them.

The inside of the house was warm, and was decorated in a mixture of bright colours. The walls of the sitting room were lined with bookshelves. Tomes on archaeology, medicine and witchcraft jostled with books from the bestseller lists, all squashed together. The house was a fusion of the old, serious and mystical and the modern, frivolous and mainstream. It was lovely.

Aradia came rushing in to the room. ‘Hello Judith’, she greeted Mum smiling warmly.

‘Scarlett, did you manage to open the box again?’ she asked me.

I nodded.

Lavendell came into the room, and smiled warmly when she saw Mum and I. Nick introduced everyone quickly. Lavendell was tall, with ink black hair like her daughter, but instead of hanging messily to her shoulders, hers was cut in a short pixie cut. Lavendell and Aradia made me unpack the box in front of them. They asked me to pick up the locket and to hold it close to them so that they could see the engravings on the front and the back. They didn’t try to touch the items.

‘I don’t know why the box picked you,’ said Lavendell, her forehead wrinkling up in confusion. ‘It’s unusual for magic to involve those who don’t have magic in their blood.’

‘Doesn’t it happen sometimes though? I think I remember something about that from school’, Aradia chimed in.

‘Very occasionally,’ her mother agreed. ‘What I propose we do is test the objects for a taint of bad magic. Bad magic may choose the inexperienced for its own purposes. If we rule that out that might put your mind at rest’. Mum looked stunned. For a woman who didn’t believe in magic of any kind, today had been a shock for her.

Aradia ran down to the apothecary to get Lavendell the ingredients she would need.

‘Have you any idea what the locket is for’, I asked Lavendell.

Lavendell took a gentle sip of her tea. ‘The objects themselves aren’t unusual, we see similar items all the time. It looks like you’ve been chosen for something. The locket is a talisman. That should keep you safe while you go about whatever your role is. The spell book would probably be a guide. Spells and magic that you would need in order to carry out your task. But without magic blood, it’s doubtful if you’d be able to perform any of these spells anyway. So why the box picked you is a bit of a mystery.’

Aradia came back with a jar, a bottle of water and some paper bags full of various dried herbs. Lavendell began to measure out herbs into the jar with a practiced eye. She muttered some words under her breath as she did so. She poured in some water and added some drops of oil. The contents of the jar turned a murky oily green. She screwed the lid on the jar and handed it to her daughter.

‘There you go. You can shake that for five minutes.’

‘Thanks, you always give me the good jobs, don’t you?’ Aradia said sarcastically. She began to shake the jar with all her might.

After a couple of minutes the liquid was black and all the lumps had disappeared. Lavendell took the jar from Aradia and unscrewed the lid.

‘Scarlett, can you hold the locket by the chain and dip it into the liquid?' The liquid gave off a strong smell, not unlike the smell of rotting vegetation. It was disgusting, and I wasn’t happy that my beautiful locket was going to be dipped into it. But Lavendell seemed to know what she was doing, so I did as she asked.

The liquid began to swirl gently in a clockwise direction. Soon it was swirling really fast, so fast I worried that the jar might spill over.

‘Is that supposed to happen?’ I asked Lavendell.

‘Yes, don’t worry,’ she replied. ‘That’s perfectly normal.’

I’d have hated to see what her idea of abnormal was.

The liquid began to change colour. Starting at the bottom a white milky colour came into the jar. It moved gradually upward, through the dark, changing the dark liquid to a white colour that pulsed with light. Eventually all the dark green colour was gone, and a sweet smell had replaced the earlier aroma of decomposition.

‘Well Scarlett, it looks like we have good magic here,’ said Lavendell. ‘It doesn’t help with the mystery of why it’s in your possession, but you can rest assured that no harm will come to you if you keep them in your house.’

‘What do I do with them?’ I asked.

‘You should wear the locket around your neck. If that’s ok with your mother. If good magic has decided that you need protection, I really don’t think that anything good will come from ignoring it.’

‘What could she need protection from?’ Mum asked warily.

Lavendell gave my mother a level look. ‘I’m afraid that your guess is as good as mine.’

‘But she can’t wear it,’ Mum argued. ‘She goes to a Rationalist school they’re not going to be ok with her parading around in a Pagan necklace, are they?’

‘She’ll need to wear it under her clothes’, Lavendell conceded, ‘and do her best not to let anybody else know that it’s there. Yes, it could cause an awful lot of problems for her if it is discovered. But like I say, there seems to have been an incredibly elaborate plan to make sure she has this locket. I think it would be foolhardy not to let her wear it.’

‘Maybe you should keep the book in the box to keep it safe’, Aradia suggested. ‘And keep in contact with us, just in case you get any portents or indications of what this could mean.’

I smirked to myself. Aradia trying to find a way that we could get to see each other legitimately, without all the lies and subterfuge. Talk about making the best of a decidedly strange situation.

I was amazed that Mum seemed to be accepting all this so easily. But just as I thought this, she opened her mouth again.

‘There’s no chance that this could all be some sort of practical joke?’ she hedged.

Lavendell took her hand. ‘It would have to have been a very elaborate joke, wouldn’t it?’ she said gently. ‘To manage to get the box into the dig site so that it doesn’t disturb the soil and to respond to nobody but Scarlett? I think that’s beyond the capabilities of most practical jokers.’ The words were softly spoken, but her tone was firm.

Later on as Mum drove us back to Chesterfield, I asked her what she thought of Lavendell.

‘She seems nice enough,’ said Mum. ‘Obviously she’s as mad as a brush, but she’s harmless.’

‘So you don’t think that what she said was right?’ I asked her. ‘You know, about needing to wear the necklace for protection?’

‘Thankfully, no,’ said Mum. ‘Maybe we should throw the stuff out, you know.’

‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘I mean, if there’s no such thing as magic then there’s no harm in me having them, right? And the necklace is quite pretty.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Mum. ‘What if someone at school sees it?’

‘They won’t,’ I said. ‘And it’s an antique. It would be a shame just to throw it out. I’d like to have it as a keepsake from my first dig.’ I hoped she’d buy it: I didn’t want to have to throw the objects out. Not yet anyway.

‘I suppose you’re right,’ sighed Mum. ‘I don’t know. It’s just upsetting to think that someone as nice as Lavendell thinks that your daughter is in such danger that an outside force is trying to protect her. Even though you know that it’s nonsense.’

All of a sudden I got a leaden feeling in the pit of my stomach. That thought hadn’t crossed my mind. Now that Mum said it, it made perfect sense. Lavendell thought that I was in danger.

But from what?

The following night I was heading to a gig with Aradia and Gethan. David, a guy who had been digging with us on the trial excavation was in a band, so a lot of us had decided to go along to the show for moral support. I’d thought about what Gethan had said. I hadn’t quite made up my mind about what I would do, but I reckoned that I might as well make the most of their company while I could. Before they were declared a no go area.

For the gig I teamed a pair of jeans with a slashed neck emerald vest top. This meant, of course, that my locket was in full view, but as the venue was in the pagan quarter I didn’t think that would be too much of an issue. I wrapped a scarf around my neck before going downstairs. Rupert and Mum wouldn’t like the fact that I was wearing a symbol of Pagan superstition, and I didn’t need any more hassle in my life right now. Mum mightn’t believe that I was in danger, but after all I’d seen since I’d moved to Avalonia I wasn’t going to take any chances.

The gig was on in the basement of a bar called the Grey Wolf in the Pagan medieval quarter. I found it without too much difficulty. The crowds of teenagers congregating outside, their frozen breath mingling with cigarette smoke, made it easy to spot. I paid my money to a formidable looking doorman, who stamped the back of my hand with a blood red wolf and walked down the rickety aluminium steps to the basement.

My eyes registered little in the first few seconds, struggling to adjust to the gloom of the room. The windows were grubby and, as they were below street level, allowed little light to enter the gig space.

In the corner there was a small raised platform where a group of heavily pierced guys were tuning their guitars, the chords pinging through the amps and rising above the steady hum of chatter in the room that was hot and nearly full. God only knew how all the smokers outside were going to fit into the room. The crowd was eclectic. Goths mixed with teenagers in rock band t-shirts. There were punk haircuts, neon outfits, emos and others who, like me, were just a little bit dressed up and looked quite bland compared to the more outlandish outfits.

A bar ran the length of one wall, but a sign behind it stated that no alcohol would be served at this event, and that anyone found to have smuggled their own in would be thrown out and barred. Despite this, I could see some people topping up their glasses with glass bottles from their bags.

I spotted Aradia and Gethan sitting on high stools across from where I was standing. Aradia’s hair was brushed down around her shoulders and she looked fantastic. She was in a pair of cargo pants and a plain purple t-shirt, but her frame carried it well. She was wearing four or five lockets looped around her neck, each of which seemed to be some type of occult symbol. Gethan was slouched beside her, wearing a pair of ripped denim jeans and a long sleeved hoodie. They were both laughing at something that the person sitting next to them was saying. On closer inspection it turned out to be Liv. I got a sinking feeling: I hadn’t known that she would be here. Maybe this night wasn’t going to be quite as fun as I’d thought.