The Hawkweed Prophecy (12 page)

“You're going?” Leo said to her without looking up. It was more of a statement than a question.

“My friend. She'll be worried.”

She wished he'd look at her, just for a moment, but he kept staring at the ground.

“Haven't you got things you don't talk about?” he said accusingly.

Poppy wanted to sit back down and tell him the things were so endless she wouldn't know where to begin. But then she heard him say, “Just go then,” and so she did the easiest thing and started walking away.

He didn't call after her. He didn't try to stop her from leaving. He just let her disappear.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

E
mber waited for Poppy until the bugs filled the dusky air and the moon appeared in a chalk-blue sky that was yet to darken. Waiting time was slow time. The seconds stretched to minutes, stretched to hours, Ember's mind pulling, twisting, and pummeling them like dough. Hope played tricks on her. The crack of a twig and Ember's spirits rose, the rustle of leaves and she turned her head expectantly, the flutter of a bird and she jumped to her feet, each time to be left disappointed. The dell had lost its magic now that Poppy wasn't there. Instead of emblems of a better life, Ember looked around her and just saw broken pieces of wood and rusting lumps of metal. Nature had tried to claim these bits of junk for its own. Ivy trailed over an old fridge, weeds poked through bicycle wheels, woodlice and beetles lived beneath old boxes, and a family of mice nested inside an old washing machine. It was how Ember imagined all the world would be in the end. One giant dell.

Lingering in this lost and lonely place, Ember felt herself begin to languish. No longer certain of Poppy's arrival, other doubts
scratched at the scabs in her mind, scraping at her newfound optimism, exposing her old insecurities. Without Poppy, Ember was nobody again. She shivered, not from the cold but from the fear. It could happen so quickly, joy to sorrow, love to loss. Worse still, she had trusted Poppy with the coven's secret. She had confided in a chaff, believing she would never tell. She had been rash and foolhardy, putting herself and the clan in danger, and all for the sake of friendship.

Ember shook her head to try to rid herself of such thoughts. Poppy would never betray her. Surely there was a simple explanation for her absence. Something important must be keeping her away—her school, her family, her health. Ember gasped as another idea took hold: What if some disaster had befallen her friend? What if she was trapped or injured, in need of Ember's help? Ember felt the panic begin to drum a beat inside of her, faster and faster, louder and louder. She looked past the dell, wishing with all her might that she could see beyond the here and now like some of the other girls. For the first time, Ember truly wished she was like them. As herself, she was powerless. Even if she stepped out beyond the dell into the unknown and headed—without permission—toward the town, she had no way of finding Poppy. The extent of her plight hit Ember harder now than it had ever done before. She wanted to run into the town and knock on every door and ask every chaff if they knew her friend, Poppy, with the short hair and the big coat and one eye of turquoise and the other of jade. Instead, Ember waited and hoped until she could wait and hope no longer.

Before she had to leave, Ember left a book for Poppy, tucking it under the sofa, the corner just peeking out so Poppy would
see it if by chance she made it to the dell that night. Ember had chosen this book carefully. Poppy had asked to be taught magic, and this had seemed the best place to start. She had imagined that they would read it together, sitting side by side, Poppy listening as she explained the different chapters. Instead, the book lay hidden under damp cushions with no reader to be had, all alone like she was.

Reaching the top of the slope, Ember had one last look back, hoping she would hear Poppy's voice echoing to her and see her arm outstretched, waving through the shadowy light. But the place was still and quiet, only the mist moving, rising from the ground like steam from a cauldron, giving the dell and all its belongings a ghostly hue. Her spirits sinking once again, Ember wandered home with a heavy feeling in her legs, dragging her feet, delaying her arrival when she would have to face another night within the camp without the memories of an afternoon with Poppy to carry her through.

Sorrel followed her cousin from a safe distance. After hours of sitting silently, it was tedious to have to creep along so slowly. She longed to break into a run and catch up with Ember. She wanted to let her limbs stretch, let the bubbling, boiling energy inside her burst out. She wanted to give Ember a shake and a slap and demand to know who it was she'd been waiting for all that time. It irritated her that her mother had been right and her feeble, unadventurous cousin actually had a secret. A big one.

Sorrel and the other sisters had Ember neatly bottled away like one of their potions, labeled as useless and utterly predictable. But Ember had popped the cork and slipped out without them noticing. Only Raven, always Raven, had spotted her evasion. Now Sorrel would have to face her mother and tell her that, despite waiting so long and suffering hours of pins and needles, she knew nothing that Raven didn't already know herself.

“It must be a boy,” she told her mother when she got home. “They had arranged a time and place and he didn't attend. Otherwise why would she look so desperate and lovestruck?”

“What did she do?” Raven asked as she rubbed Sorrel's feet in almond oil.

“Nothing.”

The grip on her foot tightened. “Tell me everything.”

“She paced, she sat, she picked at the grass and tore a fallen leaf into a thousand pieces. She paced some more. On occasion she would jump to her feet and stare, believing that she'd heard a sign of his arrival. Then, when she realized it was not so, her face would fall and she would sit back down and fidget once again. Finally she gave up hoping for his appearance, and came home.” Sorrel didn't add that, for sport, she'd caused a stirring in the grass and trees just to see Ember's eyes light up, then cloud again.

“What else?” Sorrel felt her mother's nails dig into her soles. “What else?”

Sorrel was on the verge of making something up just to satisfy her mother when suddenly the memory came to her.

“She left him a book.”

“A book?” The claws retracted and the grip lessened.

“She put it under the cushion of the sofa there.”

“She left a boy one of our books. Why?”

“I don't know,” Sorrel replied nervously. “Should I have retrieved it?”

Raven's hands were still and cold as they waited upon Sorrel's feet. Finally the answer came. “No,” Raven muttered. “Let's bide our time for now and let this little mystery reveal itself.” She shut her eyes to think some more, then spoke again. “What would some chaff boy want with a book?”

Sorrel realized that this question wasn't for her. Raven was asking herself. Her mother's fingers started to move again, rubbing and pressing, working in time with her mind as it delved, deliberated, and determined.

Sorrel's foot was only released when Charlock knocked on their door and called Raven away. Sister Bridget had heard the Eastern clan was on the move. They hadn't traveled so far in over a hundred years. Sorrel caught a trace of apprehension in her aunt's eyes, and her mother, who usually berated such interruptions, got to her feet instantly and without complaint.

“Get yourself to bed, child,” she ordered.

Sorrel watched them slip away, gathering with the other elders by the fire. Long into the night they conferred, and Sorrel felt her ears burn and knew they were talking about her.
The prophecy again
, she thought gloomily. All alone, under the cover of darkness and with her mother preoccupied elsewhere, she allowed herself to wish that Ember was more of a witch so she could share the deadening weight of expectation with her. Sorrel wondered, not for the first time, what her life would have been like if three hundred and three years ago those witches had not looked into
the future of the Hawkweed sisters. She would not know the path her life would take; instead, she would meander this way and that until she found the avenue that suited her.

Her mother would love her for the child she was, not for the woman she'd become. Her friends would treat her as an equal, feeling free to tease and tittle-tattle as well as joke and play. Her teachers would not require perfection. They'd commend her for what she could do and not castigate her for what she could not.

As Sorrel dreamed, her eyes shut and she eased into a sleep where her fantasy of anonymity and mediocrity could come true. Her face mellowed, and for the next few hours, she became that other girl—young, carefree, and content.

When at last Poppy reached the dell it was dark and Ember had gone. She found a book tucked under the sofa, sticking out of the cushion. It was old and heavy like the others. Poppy held it in her hands and thought of the generations of women before her who'd held it too. The thought comforted her and she hugged the book to her, wishing she could hug her friend, her life raft, who never made her feel like she was out of her depth, like she was drowning. She left Ember a note saying she was sorry for being late and she'd be there tomorrow. With it, she left her geography book. It hardly seemed a fair exchange, but they'd been studying Africa at school. Ember would like that.

Lying in bed that night, Poppy read Ember's book until her hands grew stiff with cold and her eyes itched from tiredness. She read all night, the house silent but for the faint crackle of
thumb on paper as she turned the pages. She read until the dawn broke. This book told of witches through the centuries. Young women who were outsiders; who knew how to heal; who had a sixth sense; who could create storms and make things happen at will, things that couldn't be explained or understood or believed; women whom people were instinctively scared of. Anything bad that happened, they were to blame.

A baby died in its sleep—Ada Swift had cursed it. A farmer's barn burned down—it was Bathsheba Flynn's revenge for being scorned by him. The village beauty fitted and foamed at the mouth—the envious Morwenna Dickinson had put a spell on her. They were the boogeywomen. Every town must have one to make some sense of their woes.

There was one, a girl named Margaret Bryant, who was suspected of witchcraft on account of her eyes. One blue, one green. The left eye had two pupils. Poppy's eyes read about Margaret's eyes. Her brain slowed and dulled so the words became just meaningless shapes on the page. Then she read about the cats who came from villages far and wide to live with Margaret Bryant. The “Cat Caller” the people had christened her.

On cue, Minx appeared at Poppy's window and gave a loud meow, rubbing her body against the glass. In that instant Poppy knew. It was like a dousing with cold water that woke her without warning from a sleepwalk. Suddenly her brain whirred into action and she saw her whole life afresh. It flickered across her mind like a reel of old film, a silent movie without words or colors, the images stark without any special effects. The cats . . . the spiders . . . the sixth sense . . . the weather . . . the accidents . . . the expulsions . . . her mother . . .

Her mad, mistaken mother! She had known. She had tried to tell her, but Poppy hadn't listened. Nobody had.

Poppy opened the window and Minx leapt inside and onto the bed. The cat waited for Poppy to get back under the covers and then stepped back and forth over her stomach before settling on it. Poppy stroked Minx's head, then lifted the book and read over and over again about poor Margaret Bryant who drowned for the sake of her eyes . . . the very same eyes that Poppy saw in the mirror each day. Poppy felt the words crystallize in her mind.

She recognized Margaret Bryant. She recognized all these women, with their old-fashioned names and cats and grisly ends.

These women were her sisters.