The Blood Binding (2 page)

“Oh, that’s awful! That’s
awful!” She turned away and pushed back through the crowd.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?”
said Steve. He was standing on the other side of the case and was clearly
fascinated.

“I’m…I don’t…”

“It’s because the peat’s
anaerobic,” said Steve. “That means there’s almost no oxygen, so a body buried
in peat doesn’t decay. Not even the hair or the stitches on their clothing.”

“How d’you know that?” asked
Rob, a sturdy boy who, as long as Belladonna had known him, had never listened
to a word in class or cracked open a single book. He was good at football,
though, which seemed to make up for everything else.

“I have a book about the Bog
People at home,” said Steve, his words coming fast and betraying his fascination.
“They’ve found them all over the place, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, and here. Mostly they’re adults, but some of them are children.”

“It’s gruesome,” said
Philippa Lawler, wrinkling her nose. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Have
you, Belladonna?”

Belladonna stared at the
thing in the case. It was a little twisted, distorted from the weight of two
thousand years of peat, and not all of it was there, but there was no mistaking
the simple dress, the reddish hair and, above all, the garland of flowers that
circled her head.

She backed away from the case,
hoping that she looked like she’d just seen enough and was going to look at the
tile samples, but as she turned she saw Steve staring at her. He followed her
back out to the cafeteria.

“What is it?”

“It’s her. The girl in the
parking lot. That’s why she’s still wet.”

“What?”

“That’s what was odd. It’s
raining, but she’s a ghost. She shouldn’t be wet.”

“But she was wet when she
died.”

Belladonna nodded.

“Can you see her? Over
there.” She pointed toward the parade ground.

“I don’t know,” said Steve,
squinting into the rain. “It’s been a while.”

Belladonna brushed her hand
against his.

“Whoa! Yes! But what is she
doing there? It’s miserable. Why doesn’t she just go to the Land of the Dead.
Why would she want to stay where it…where it happened?”

“Let’s go ask her,” said
Belladonna, heading for the door.

Steve glanced back into the
museum reluctantly.

“It’s okay,” said Belladonna.
“I’ll just say I dropped something when I was over there and Mr. Watson said we
aren’t supposed to go anywhere alone.”

“We’ve used that one before,
Belladonna. We’re going to have to come up with something new one day.”

Belladonna grinned, pulled up
her hood and stepped out into the rain. Steve followed, though his hoodie
wasn’t much protection from the downpour. They hadn’t gone far before she
slowed down and looked at him.

“What d’you mean ‘where it
happened?’ Where what happened?”

Steve stopped.

“They think…archaeologists
and stuff…they think…that is, they’re fairly sure that…that the people found in
the bogs were sacrificed.”

“Sacrificed?”

“Maybe when food was scarce
or something. They’d give them some kind of drugged drink--”

“Wait. How do they know
that?”

“They’ve found the remains in
some of the stomachs. Anyway, they’d drug them, then take them out to the
marshes and strangle them. Sometimes they’d cut their throats, too.”

“Strangle them?” Belladonna’s
blood ran cold.

“Yeah, and…what’s wrong?”

“I thought it was a necklace.
I told her it looked tight.”

“Well, it probably is,” said
Steve. “Come on, let’s find out why she’s still here.”

They trudged across the ruins
to the parking lot and over to where Branwyn waited, smiling and clearly
pleased to see Belladonna again.

“Hello!”

“Hello, Branwyn. This is my
friend Steve.”

“Hello, Steve.”

“Branwyn…we were wondering,
why are you here?”

“Why I’m here?”

“Yes,” said Steve. “You do
know you’re dead, right?”

“Yes,” whispered Branwyn
sadly, her hand flittering to the leather band around her neck.

“Ow!” yelped Steve, clutching
at his chest.

Belladonna and Branwyn stared
at him.

“What is it?”

“It’s…something sharp.” He
reached into his jacket and pulled out a small blade with an elaborate hilt.

Branwyn shrank back.

“No,” she whispered. “Please.
They promised they wouldn’t do that. They promised!”

“The Rod of Gram?”

Steve nodded and leaned forward.
He tried to steady Branwyn with his left hand, but it passed right through her.

“I don’t see how…” he
started.

“The strap, try just the
strap,” said Belladonna.

Branwyn was weeping now, her
ghostly tears leaving trails of pale skin in their wake.

“Please…”

Steve leaned down again,
reached for the strap and sliced through it. He unwound it gently from around
Branwyn’s neck and stepped back. The strap immediately crumbled into dust and
blew away on a gust of wind as the blade returned to its usual form—a somewhat
battered plastic six-inch ruler.

Belladonna had to admit that
there was a part of her that hoped it was the leather thong that had held
Branwyn to the spot where she died, but if her experiences with the dead had
taught her anything, it was that things were seldom so simple.

“Can you go now?” she asked,
hoping against hope.

“Go where?” asked Branwyn,
puzzled.

“To the Land of the Dead,”
said Steve. “The Other Side. It’s really nice. The weather’s a
lot
better.”

Branwyn looked from one to
the other in disbelief, as if she’d stumbled upon the stupidest people on the
planet.

“I can’t go,” she whispered.
“I can’t go anywhere.”

“Why not?” asked Belladonna.

“And what’s with the
whispering?” asked Steve.

“If I whisper they stay
away,” she said. “Can’t you see them? They’re all around!”

Steve looked at Belladonna.
She nodded and closed her eyes, feeling the strength of the Words as they came
to her lips. But this time they weren’t quite so strange, this time they were
Words she had used before.

“
Igi si gar
,” she
said, then again, louder. “
Igi si gar
!!”

Reveal yourself!

“Oh, sh…criminy!!!” Steve
staggered back, falling over the railroad ties and landing in the gravel.

Belladonna opened her eyes.
He was staring at something, and from the angle of his gaze, it was something
very big.

And it was behind her.

She turned around slowly. It
wasn’t an “it,” it was a them: huge swirling, morphing black clouds, like giant
murmurations of starlings. Belladonna stared. They were almost beautiful, but
the waves of menace that pulsed across the parade ground and parking lot
prevented them from being anything other than terrifying.

“Steve…”

“I know! I know!” Steve
scrambled to his feet and pulled out the ruler, but instead of turning into
something useful, he found himself holding something he’d never seen before.
“What’s that?” he said, staring at it.

“It’s a pair of secateurs,”
said Belladonna, glancing sideways but unwilling to take her eyes off the
swirling black clouds.

“A pair of
what
??”

“Secateurs,” repeated
Belladonna. “They’re used for gardening. My mum had some.”

“
Gardening???
”

“What are they?” asked
Belladonna.

“Spirits of the Black Water,”
said Branwyn. “They destroy crops, spread disease, bring death to animals and
men. We had to keep them here.”

“Here?”

“Here where the black water
is. Our Seers would bind them to the peat marsh. That’s why I cannot leave,
even if I wanted to.”

“Wait…” Steve glanced at
Branwyn, unwilling to take his attention away from the swirling masses of
whatever-it-was  that surrounded them. “They used
you
?
You’re
the
one who is keeping them here?”

“Blood binds strongest.”

“But…you’re dead,” said
Steve. “You don’t have any blood. Your body isn’t even here, it’s over there in
the museum.”

“I think you might be being
too literal,” said Belladonna.

“I don’t know what that
means,” said Branwyn.

“It means, it’s not actual
blood, is it? It’s the kind where…you know, when people describe someone as a
‘blood relative.’ It just means they’re related.”

“Yes,” Branwyn said, smiling.
“That’s it. But it couldn’t be him, could it? He was too important. I didn’t
matter. I was a girl and I had a limp. No one would ever take me to wife. It
was all explained.”

“By who?” said Steve.

“Whom,” said Belladonna.

“Whatever. It was the Seer,
wasn’t it? Was he your father?”

“No. My father died of the
ague. My uncle had been bound here before, but it turned out my grandmother
yielded to temptation and he was not of the blood.”

“Good for granny,” muttered
Steve.

“So the Seer was your
grandfather?”

“My great-uncle. They said he
was the greatest seer that had ever been. Only he knew how to bind the Spirits
of the Black Water.”

“I bet he did,” said Steve,
his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“But there must be something
we can--”

“There isn’t,” said Branwyn.
“This is how things must be. But thank you for spending some time with me. And
thank you very much for removing the band. I feel much better now.”

“But…” began Belladonna.

Steve took her arm and pulled
her away. The secateurs returned to the shape of the ruler and the shifting
Spirits became more faint.

“We have to do something,”
said Belladonna, wrenching her arm free. “We can’t just leave her like this!”

“I know,” said Steve. “But
we’re not going to figure it out here, are we? We need to find out more. Find
out exactly what those things are.”

Belladonna wanted him to be
wrong, wanted some Words to come, but she knew that they wouldn’t. This was
something else, something as old as the Earth, something even older than the
Queen of the Abyss.

“We’ll be back,” she yelled.
“Branwyn, we’ll help you, I promise.”

Branwyn turned, smiled and
waved, watching as they walked before returning to her lonely vigil, keeping
the Spirits of the Black Water bound and idly picking pieces of peat from her
red hair.

The back of the bus was as
noisy as ever on the trip back to school, but Belladonna couldn’t help noticing
that, for once, Steve wasn’t at the epicenter of things. He was sitting next to
the window on the back seat, lost in thought.

The short October days meant
that it was nearly dark by the time they got back, and the streets around the
school were clogged with the cars of parents unwilling to let their kids find
their own ways home through the gloomy streets. The ones who did have to walk
left quickly, while there was still a faint glimmer of day. The rain had
stopped, though, so things weren’t quite as dreary as they might have been.

Steve took a back way and met
Belladonna a couple of blocks away from the school. Ever since the incident
with the Proctors and the standing stones, Miss Parker had insisted that, as
Paladin, it was part of his job to make sure the Spellbinder got home safely.
He had agreed, but wasn’t prepared to go so far as to let anyone see him doing
it.

On most days he would jump
out of the bushes and try to scare her, but today he just fell into step beside
her as they made their way to Lychgate Lane. Belladonna glanced at him through
the dark curtains of her lank hair. There was something unsettling in his
silence.

“What is it?” she said,
finally.

Steve shrugged and they walked
on in silence until the black spire of St. Abelard’s came into view.

“It’s just…” he said,
suddenly. “She’s…I mean, she
was
about our age, wasn’t she?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“What would it have been
like?”

“To die like that, you mean?”

“Yes. No. Sort of.” He
stopped and looked over at the silhouettes of the gravestones in the cemetery.
“Everyone goes eventually. Even kids. We could get sick or have an accident…”

“Or get beheaded by a huge
faceless demon.”

“Yeah,” said Steve,
remembering the Allu and smiling. “That too. But it’s not the same as someone
from your own family walking up to you and telling you that they’re going to
take you into some swamp and strangle you, is it?”

“No. And telling her that
she’d been chosen not because she was special, but because she was worthless.”

“D’you think they did it in
the dark?”

Belladonna shuddered.

“Don’t think about it,” she
said. “It’s too awful. We’ll go and see Miss Parker in the morning.”

“Okay.”

They walked on up the street
until the lights of 65 Lychgate Lane could be clearly seen.

“See you tomorrow then,” said
Steve.

“’Bye,” said Belladonna.

But he was already gone,
running down the street and around the corner. Belladonna walked up the path
and opened the door.

“I’m home!” she shouted.

“We’re in the kitchen!”

It was Grandma Johnson’s
voice. That meant frozen food for dinner again.

Belladonna dumped her bag by
the door and hung her anorak on its hook before dawdling into the kitchen.

“Hey, kiddo!” said her dad,
cheery as ever. “How were the Roman ruins?”

“Wet. Where’s mum?”

“She’s busy, Belladonna. Come
on, sit down and get those wet shoes off.”

A chair moved itself out from
the table and Belladonna sat down and leaned over to take off her shoes. Which
was when she noticed the glance that her dad and Grandma Johnson exchanged. She
sat up and looked at them, suddenly worried.

“What is it? What’s happened?”

“Nothing,” said Grandma
Johnson, softly. “Everything’s fine. She’s just busy.”

She turned to her dad.

“Really,” he said. “D’you
think I’d be here if she wasn’t alright?”

“Yes, but--”

“She’s not your Aunt
Deirdre,” said Grandma Johnson, almost reading her thoughts. “She hasn’t gone
off on some wild goose chase. She’s on the Other Side…busy.”

Belladonna felt somewhat
reassured, but she still didn’t like the situation, and she liked it even less
when, after dinner, her dad dematerialized before the credits of “Staunchly
Springs” had even finished.

“Don’t you have any
homework?” asked Grandma Johnson.

“Yes.”

“Well then.”

Belladonna went out to the
hall, grabbed her bag and stomped up the stairs to her room. She whizzed
through the math homework without her usual care, then skimmed the chapter of
“Silas Marner” they were supposed to read for English. She usually liked
English, but “Silas Marner” was without doubt
the
most boring book on
the face of the planet.

She grabbed a stack of books about
mythology through the ages and went back downstairs. The school secretary, Mrs.
Jay, had given a set each to her and Steve with instructions to memorize
everything. It had been interesting at first, but after a while all the
creatures, gods, goddesses and demons had started to sort of meld together and
she’d stopped reading them.

She was still a little
annoyed about no one telling her what was going on with her mum, but when she
got downstairs the living room fire was on and Grandma Johnson had made hot
chocolate and brought out some little cakes. Belladonna sat on the floor near
the fire and felt bad about the stomping. She sipped her hot chocolate and
began leafing through the books.

Now she wished she’d stuck at
it longer when she’d first been given them. There were four books, and each was
about four inches thick—it was like hunting for a needle in a haystack.
No…worse…it was like looking for a particular needle in a stack of needles. She
turned the pages of each and then checked the indexes.

“What are you looking for,
dear?”

“Spirits of the Black Water,”
said Belladonna.

She told her grandmother
about Branwyn and the strange, malevolent clouds.

“And that’s what she called
them? Spirits of the Black Water?”

“Yes, but they’re not mentioned
in any of these books and Mrs. Jay said she’d never heard of them either.”

“Well, don’t worry dear, I’m
sure Miss Parker will know what to do. Now drink your chocolate milk, it’s time
for that alien autopsy show.”

“You know that UFO stuff is
all rubbish, right Grandma? It’s not real.”

“Yes, well that’s what most
people say about ghosts, isn’t it? Have another cake and change the telly to
channel five.”

The next morning the rain was
back and even with all the lights on, the classrooms at Dulworth’s seemed
cloaked in gloom. French seemed to drag on forever, with Madame Huggins going
on and on about irregular verbs, which appeared to be nearly all of them, as
far as Belladonna could make out. Then came geography with Mr. Kettlewick. They
were doing North America, but Belladonna couldn’t concentrate on what he was
saying because he kept pronouncing the Appalachians as Appa-latch-ianze, when
she’d seen a documentary just last week and knew it was supposed to be
Appa-laysh-anz.

When break finally rolled
around, she met Steve at the foot of the stairs that led to the science labs
and Miss Parker’s office. They practically ran to her door and pressed the
buzzer.

“I never thought I’d actually
want
to come and see old Parker,” said Steve.

“Sh!” said Belladonna.
“She’ll hear you!”

Silence. No red busy light,
no yellow wait light and no green enter light.

“She was in assembly,” said
Belladonna. “She
has
to be here.”

She pressed the buzzer again.
Silence.

Steve turned the door handle.

“Steve! You can’t do that!”

He smiled, pushed the door
open a crack and stuck his head inside.

“Rats and earwigs!”

“What?”

“Look,” he said, flinging the
door wide.

Belladonna glanced around the
landing, nervously, making sure no one was watching, then cautiously stepped
into the office.

Her heart sank. It wasn’t
just that Miss Parker wasn’t there—the lacrosse stick she kept mounted on the
wall was missing too. The stick became her staff when she was the Queen of the
Abyss, the ruler of the Land of the Dead, and the fact that it was not in its
frame could mean only one thing.

“Oh, no! She’s on the Other
Side!”

“We could ask Mrs. Jay,”
suggested Steve. “She gave us all those mythology books, after all.”

“
What
do you
think
you are doing?” boomed an all-too-familiar voice behind them. “And ask me
what?”

“I’m sorry,” stammered Steve.
“We were…that is…”

“We wanted to ask Miss Parker
about the Spirits of the Black Waters.”

“About the what?”

Mrs. Jay hustled them back
into Miss Parker’s office and closed the door.

“Explain,” she snapped.

Steve told her about Branwyn
and the huge black shifting clouds.

Mrs. Jay listened carefully,
thought for a moment, then shook her head.

“Never heard of them.”

“Then where--” began
Belladonna.

Mrs. Jay silenced her with a
shake of her head.

“You can’t help every ghost
that’s in trouble,” she said. “That’s not why you’re here. There are always
going to be unfortunate situations. You are here to prevent the Empress of the
Dark Spaces returning. You should be learning the skills that you will need on
that dark day and finding the nomials that will form the Multiversal Orrery.
These spirits, or whatever they are, have already been bound. They pose no
danger. Now get back downstairs, break is nearly over.”

She pushed them out of the
office, closed the door and then locked it.

“But we can’t just--”

“Yes, you can. Now go!”

They walked down the stairs
slowly and were met by a familiar figure waiting near the hot drinks machine.

“What-ho, chums!” said Elsie,
cheerily.

“Oh, great,” muttered Steve.

“Where have you been?” asked
Belladonna. “We haven’t seen you for ages.”

“Oh, everyone’s getting ready
for the parties,” said Elsie, her perfect chestnut curls, bouncing with
excitement.

“What parties?”

“Halloween, of course,” said
Elsie, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s tomorrow!”

“And the ghosts have parties?”

“Yes. Lots of them.”

“Since when?” asked Steve,
skeptically.

“Since always,” said Elsie.
“Well, not last year, obviously. All that Dr. Ashe stuff put rather a damper on
things. Speaking of dampers, why so glum?”

Belladonna told the story of
Branwyn yet again, finishing just as the bell sounded for the end of break and
the halls suddenly filled with students on their way to classes.

“Hm,” said Elsie,
thoughtfully. “I’ll see what I can find out. Library later?”

“Yes,” said Steve.
“Lunchtime.”

Elsie nodded and vanished.

“See you later,” muttered
Steve, strolling away and disappearing into the crowd.

Belladonna sighed and made
her way to the other end of the school and double chemistry. The rest of the
morning stretched on endlessly, and even the fact that Steve still managed to
make his solution go “bang!” when it was just supposed to turn purple didn’t
really help matters much. Mr. Morris didn’t even send him to see Miss Parker,
he just made a slight huffing noise and moved on to Sophie Warren, whose
solution was just the right color…of course.

“I almost wouldn’t mind her
constantly picking on me if she could just get a “D” in something once in while,”
complained Belladonna when they reached the solitude of the small, almost
entirely useless library.

“I think I need to expand my
repertoire,” said Steve. “Move on from loud noises. Smells, maybe.”

“Don’t,” said Belladonna,
wrinkling her nose. “It’d get in everyone’s hair and clothes.”