Page 28 of Witchlore
“You are not going to give it René to eat!” I exclaim, jerking on Bastian’s hand, which, for some reason, has ended up holding mine again.
“Obviously not!” Bastian snaps at me. “Just shut up, Lando.”
Somehow, him being annoyed at me feels good, a hint of normality in this otherwise utterly bizarre encounter.
“I have a dog and I’ll walk it here at least once a week,” Bastian goes on. “I’ll bring you an offering to protect the wood. Once a week, an intentional offering for you of whatever you want—”
“I want the curdled milk of goats to soothe the rage inside my throat.”
“You want a weekly offering of goat’s cheese?” I can’t help blurting out as I stare at the hunched shadows. Like everything in life, it gets a little less terrifying the longer I look at it. I still don’t want to take my eyes off it, though.
“Lando, don’t—” Bastian hisses.
“Seriously, it’s the most bougie boggart on the planet.”
Bastian sighs and drops my hand. He raises his knife and, in a quick moment, has pulled it across his palm and sprayed blood down on the mulch of wet leaves. I jump back, a thickening in my throat. Inside my mind, I see the bathroom, those sharp rosy drops of blood, tiny flowers scattered under my feet. I swallow copper-tasting saliva.I’m not there,I tell myself sternly.Stay here, you have to stay here or you might not get out alive.
“I swear on my blood I will bring you goat’s cheese once a week and if I cannot bring it, someone else will bring it in my stead,” Bastian says clearly. “For this offering, will you give me your name?”
The shadows still for a moment, as if whatever hidden horror lives inside is considering its words carefully. We wait. Panic builds inside me, nudging its way to a slow crescendo that makes me want to scream, to run, to cry but I can do none of those things. I’m planted to the spot, waiting to see if a magical creature will accept an offering of goat’s cheese. It’s utterly absurd, it’s practically laughable, except that my throat is locked tight with pure, rigid fear. For a second, I absently wonder if it will kill us and lick our bones clean, like they do in the stories, and then hate my brain for doing that to me.
“The name is not for you, but for your friend, the one who will need it, in the end,” the boggart whispers. A tingling begins behind my knees. Bastian turns to look at me.
“What does that mean?” I ask. I hate that my voice shakes. The boggart circles us, creeping over wet leaves, the shadows whipping around us. The air chills with the rapid movement, suddenly cold enough to see my breath. There’s a smell, too, the sweet decomposing mulch of dead leaves and mud, like the earth underneath a heavy rock.Run,a part of me screams, but it’s like thatdream when your mouth opens to scream but nothing comes out. All I can do is stand, desperate and shaking, in the middle of a storm of rotting.
“I speak in riddles, it is my curse; but what was done to you was worse.” Its whispers chase me. I turn my head this way and that, trying to catch hold of those pallid, roving eyes.
“You know nothing about me!” I shout. Bastian’s hand grips my elbow. “Give me your name!”
I turn my head and it’s right in front of me: it’srightin front of me, so close that I can see the tree roots that make up its face, the rotted mushrooms that form its skin, the lank trails of dead leaves that make up its hair. It’s like a little child, if they had disintegrated into the forest floor, half-alive and slowly moldering. A red mouth speaks, teeth sharp and gray like pebbles. All my jokes are gone, every comeback, every witty retort has vanished from my mind. Quietness descends, like the moment when Elizabeth stopped breathing, nothing but unbearable, ringing silence.
“What dwells beneath your anger.” The boggart’s musty words smell like death and cheese. I try not to choke as it leans close, wet, spoiled leaves catching my face and leaving a slick residue. “My name is this: Elander.”
Light explodes from my every pore and I feel that familiar wrenching, agonizingpullin my bones that precedes a shift.No, no, I can’t shift,I think, horrified.Not here, not now!I want to push Bastian back; I want to make sure he’s safe, but I can’t move because it’s coming now. Shifts are unstoppable. I throw my head back, screaming, and give in to the roaring light and pain inside me. Suddenly, I’m not there anymore.
I’m arm in arm with my sisters, our flags caught in the high breeze, our dresses dusty from the dry ground around the clough, listening to a speaker as he cries aloud the need for the right to organize and the right of free people everywhere. The sun is high in the sky and bright. There are thousands of us, nearly thirty thousand, many suffragettes and ordinary folk, come to hear about the cause as the speaker’s voice travels over the flat space between the hill and the ravine. Then suddenly, over the hill comes a shout, a brawling bustle, and like ants over jam they spread. A surly gang of protesters, screaming their insults to the skies and shouldering women out of the way, not caring whom they knock down, trying to get to the center, to the speaker and the woman beside him. I know if they reach them, they will be done for.
“Run!” I scream at them.
I see them pushing their way through the crowd, hemmed in on all sides, and I sigh with small relief when I see her scrambling over the hill. Mrs. Pankhurst’s daughter is safe. Then I link arms with my sisters and turn to face the oncoming tide of fists and kicks, standing between these violent men and the daughter of the mother of the movement. As the sun beats down, I look up to the high clouds and think that perhaps this is a good cause to die for.
CHAPTERTEN
“Lando! Lando, wake up!”
I jerk back into reality. The bright sunshine above the protesters is gone, and the heat of the bodies pressed beside me, facing down the enemy, is replaced with a chill damp, the pain in my body, and fear, liquid and nauseous in my mouth. I can make out a worried face and hear a shrieking all around me, but I don’t know what’s happened, only that it is still happening and it is terrifying. The shrieking is the vilest kind of childish scream, vibrating agonizingly in my eardrums.
“Getback!” someone screams, and there is a flash of violent blue light. In it, I see the silhouette of a witch, their hands held together above their head in a hand sequence I don’t recognize—clenched fists crossed over one another at the wrist—blue light pulsing out of their ring, so blinding I wince and turn away, so harsh it pushes the shrieking boggart back from us. The air is thick with the smell of magic, of burning, as if the forest has been set alight with us inside.
My heart is thundering. My whole life, people have witnessed my shifts, sudden and uncontrollable, and seen me as scary. I’venever seen witches do magic as powerful as shapeshifters, and for a breathless second, I panic that this person might not truly be in control, that he might be able to hurt me. Then there’s an unexpected thrilling familiarity, a surprising recognition, and a singular, rogue thought:He’s a bit like me.He’s got hold of my hand, urgently pulling me to my feet, forcing me to move.
“Run, Lando!” he screams. The spell has pushed the boggart away but I can hear screeching getting closer, coming back for a second pass. So I run haphazardly in the darkness, staggering over uneven ground and slipping on dead leaves and gasping as something shrieks and whirls behind us, following us.
“What happened?” I yell at Bastian as he drags me on.
“You shifted and the boggart freaked out!” Bastian jumps over a log and I follow, nearly toppling over. “It’s gone mental!”
“Why?”
