Page 24 of Witchlore
“Yes, well, sort of, they’re not goblins, they’re little domestic creatures that are connected to the land.” Bastian’s voice gets quieter the deeper we walk into the woods. “When they are fed and kept happy, they help keep the land safe and look after domestic dwellings.”
“Yeah, but that’s not what boggarts are today.” I remember everything that Elizabeth told me. “I mean, boggarts now are mean and make nests and collect the bones of kids—”
“Yes, because when a brownie or a silkie isn’t looked after properly they become a boggart,” Bastian explains. “They become resentful and nasty and if you name them, then they can never leave.”
“So that’s why people say never name a boggart.” It’s an idiom that pops up with witches all the time, a way of saying you did something that led to an unlucky series of events:and then I named the boggart.I give him a sideways glance.
“And you really believe we’re going to find one?”
“We’d better, otherwise the spell will be a dud.”
“And we’ll just be weirdos wandering around a forest with cheese.”
“Exactly,” Bastian says. I check quickly to see if he’s making fun of me, but it doesn’t look like it, despite me being the most awkward person on the planet. I quirk my lips into a tentative smile.
“But if itishere…”It won’t be,I tell myself. “We don’t just have to find it, we have to get its name?”
“Yep.” Bastian doesn’t sound bothered at all. Doesanythingever faze him?
“So how are we going to do that?” I press him.
“Show me the cheese.”
I dig into my bag and hand it to him. He stares at the net of round cheeses that he’s holding.
“These are Babybels,” he says, shaking them slightly.
“Yeah, it’s cheese.”
“Are you eight?”
I flush and snatch them back.
“You asked for cheese!” I protest.
“It’s not even cheese, those areveganBabybels—”
“Like the boggart will care! What did you bring?” I snatch at his satchel, opening it up and then stepping back, overwhelmed by the smell coming from it. “Christ, that is rough.”
I cover my mouth with my hand. It smells like a pair of really old football socks died.
“It’s blue cheese,” Bastian says stiffly, pulling out a package wrapped in beige cloth. It smells rank but it looks very posh. “It’s what my dad had in the fridge.”
“It’s so nasty!” I cough. “I’d definitely rather eat a vegan Babybel.”
“Well, let’s see which one the boggart likes best.” Bastian starts unwrapping it and then crumbling bits of it and dropping them onto the forest floor. “Come on, leave a trail.”
I follow his lead and start unwrapping Babybels and breaking them into pieces that I drop behind me as Bastian steps off the path and starts to make another one through the dense trees, stamping down stinging nettles, the wet leaves slipping past my cheek and twigs catching on the shoulders of my coat. I think of the lucky dog or squirrel that is going to be feasting on my Babybels later.
“Lights off,” Bastian mutters. “Don’t want to scare it.”
Now that we’re off the path and there’s no open sky above us, no moonlight or starlight, I’m very aware of the crunch of branches under my feet and the sound of Bastian’s breathing beside me in the dark. Unhelpful questions chase around my mind:What am I doing here with this person? What kind of impulsive prat am I that I’m doing this?Even if there’s no boggart to be found, willingly taking a stroll in a dark wood with a strange man is hardly peak decision-making for someone like me.
“So your dad’s into stinky cheese?” I ask, mainly to stop the worries in my head that I am, like Counselor Cooper says, “behaving recklessly with my own existence.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe that’s why your mum left,” I quip. Bastian whips his head around to stare at me as I wince. Elizabeth used to say my mouth works faster than my brain. Classic case in point.
