'Are you going to be a witch, girl?' Lizzie asked. 'Is that what you want?'
I didn't really want to become a witch, but to say no would have made Lizzie really angry, so I nodded for the third time.
'Then don't be afeard of dead witches. Besides, those down in the dell won't do you much harm. They're all sisters-in-death. They don't bother each other much and they won't bother you. Get ye gone but be sure to be back afore dawn. What's in the jug will spoil in daylight!'
A WITCH YOU'LL ALWAYS BE
Witch Dell was north of the Devil's Triangle, the three villages where the Malkins, Deanes and Mouldheels made their homes. It was a clear night, the moon waxing to three quarters full. Pendle Hill to the west was bathed in silver light, and so bright was that moonshine that only two stars in the sky were visible.
When I reached the dell, it was less than half an hour before midnight so I couldn't afford to dawdle and walked straight in. It was gloomy, a patchwork of dappled moon-shadows, the gnarled roots like ogres' fingers clutching the ground. But last year's autumn leaves were heaped thickly around the trunks of some of the trees. That bothered me. They could have been blown there by the wind, but a dark alternative wormed its way into my head.
They could have been piled there by dead witches, couldn't they? Dank loamy beds to rest dead bones under on a chill night; leafy lairs from which to strike, grasping the ankles of unwary travellers before dragging them down for a blood-feast.
Had to trust what Lizzie had told me though - that they wouldn't hurt me; that the dead forgot clan enmities. But I'd not gone more than a hundred yards when I heard something heading my way, feet shuffling through the leaves. Something nasty was approaching…
So I sniffed her out. It was a dead witch all right, but there was something odd about her. It was only when she stepped into a shaft of moonlight that I saw that she didn't have a head. She was carrying it under her arm like a big pumpkin. So I knew who she was right away!
It was Grim Gertrude, the oldest witch in the dell.
Years earlier, the witch assassin Grimalkin had sliced off her head. Best thing to do in the circumstances. That had slowed her down all right! Story goes that it was almost a month before she finally found it again. So she wasn't going to let it go now. Gripping it really tightly, she was.
Gertrude turned so that she was facing me, her eyes watching me. The glassy, rheumy eyes glistened in the moonlight and the pale lips moved, but no sound reached my ears. The head wasn't connected to the neck so her voice-box didn't work. But I could read her lips and knew what she was saying:
'Who are you? What clan are ye from? Speak while you've still breath in your scrawny body!'
'My name's Alice Deane, but my mother was a Malkin.'
'As you're half Malkin, I'll let you live, but you're not welcome here, child,' mouthed the lips. 'The living don't come here - not if they know what's good for them!'
I began to tremble. Lizzie had lied to me. She'd not wanted to risk coming to the dell herself after dark so she'd sent me to risk my neck.
'Bony Lizzie sent me to get something, she did. It's a jug buried near the biggest oak in the dell…'
Gertrude stepped nearer to me and suddenly reached out to grab me by the arm. She pulled me close, and a damp, loamy, rotting smell filled my nostrils, making me want to retch.
'Do you do everything that Lizzie tells you?' she asked.
'She's my mistress and is training me to be a witch. Don't have much choice, do I?’
Gertrude sniffed me three times. 'You were born a witch and a witch you'll always be. Don't have to be Lizzie who trains you. You've got the makings of somebody really strong. You could find someone else to show you the way.'
'Only been with Lizzie just over a day,’ I told her. 'Might give her till the end of the week. Let's see how she shapes up.'
Couldn't lip-read what Gertrude said next. It took me a few moments to realize that she was laughing.
'You've got spirit, girl,' her lips mouthed at last. 'If Lizzie don't suit, I can teach you all about the dark. Won't be the first dead witch who's trained a young girl and shown her what's proper. Can't do dark magic myself'- been dead too long for that - but I do still remember how things are done, and I can see that the power's in you. Together, we could bring it out. We'd make a good team, me and you. Help each other. So think it over, girl. You know where to find me. Now go and get what Lizzie needs. I won't stand in your way.'
I watched the dead witch shuffle off into the trees, her head still tucked underneath her arm. Dead and smelly, she was, but still nicer than Lizzie.
I went on till I reached the tallest oak tree in the dell, waited until exactly midnight, and then dug with my fingers close to the trunk in the shadow cast by the moon. Didn't take me long to find what Lizzie wanted because it wasn't buried very deep. It was a small earthen jug. The lid was fastened on tight so I didn't try to force it off. It was Lizzie's business anyway. So I took it back to her.
'Well done, girl!' she said, giving me a twisted smile. 'Now get yourself to bed. I've got work to do and it's not something you're ready to see yet. You'll need months of training afore you're ready for that.'
So I went up to my room and tried to sleep. It took me a long while because every time I closed my eyes I kept seeing scary Gertrude. The noises coming from downstairs didn't help either. I heard what sounded like a wild animal growling and then, a little later, a young child bawling its eyes out. When I finally nodded off, I slept for hours. Lizzie didn't bother to wake me and I didn't get up till late afternoon.
'Look what the cat's dragged in!' Lizzie said as I staggered downstairs. 'Now you're up at last you'd best get busy making supper. Fancy a good beef stew, I do. I'm going out and won't be back until after dark. Make sure that stew's waiting for me and that it's piping hot.'
Sleeping in late had given me a headache so I went for a stroll first to clear my head. Enjoyed my walk and got back later than I'd intended, so I had to rush a bit with the meal. The sun had set before I even got started. I chopped up onions, potatoes, carrots and beets, and added them to the big iron pot, where chunks of beef were already boiling away over the kitchen fire. Only really good at cooking one meal, I am - that's rabbit turned on a spit over an open fire - but though I say it myself, about half an hour later, when I took a sip from the ladle, that stew was quite tasty.
All I needed to do now was put the lid on and let it simmer till Lizzie got back. Had to root through her mucky cupboards and it took me quite a while to find the lid. While I was giving it a good scrubbing in the sink, I heard a noise behind me - what sounded like a splash. I turned round but could see nothing. Puzzled, I dried the lid, then carried it across to the pot.
What I saw next made me come to a sudden halt and drop the lid, which fell onto the flags with a loud clang. Two eyes were staring at me from the pot. It was Lizzie's familiar, Old Spig - but only his ugly head was visible; the rest of him was hidden by the bubbling stew. His mouth was wide open and he was slurping up the boiling liquid just as fast as he could.
'That's Lizzie's supper! She ain't going to thank you for eating it!' I warned him.
Spig's eyes widened a little but he didn't bother to reply. He just kept on gulping down the stew as if he couldn't get enough of it.
I started to get angry. Soon there wouldn't be enough left for our suppers and Lizzie would be really annoyed with me, to say the least. Not that I fancied the stew much now that Spig had decided to swim in it.
'Get out of there, you dirty little thing!' I snapped.
Old Spig's head rose out of the stew so that I could just see the beginning of his narrow scaly neck. 'What did you just call me?' he demanded.
His voice was harsh and surprisingly deep for such a small creature. There was something so malevolent about it that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
'Called you a dirty little thing!' I said. 'It ain't nice, you crawling around in our supper like that. Lizzie won't like it. I'
ll tell her what you've done unless you get out of my pot right away'
He leaped out towards me and I stepped back quickly. But he hadn't meant to jump on me. He fell short of where I'd been standing and perched on the edge of the mantelpiece. He was covered in soupy stew and it started to ooze from his body and form a puddle underneath him. Despite that, I was now able to get a proper look at him for the first time.
Old Spig was about the size of a small rabbit but he was almost all head - and an uglier one I'd never seen. It was covered with green scales, apart from the face. He had a hooked nose and pointy ears, with a very wide mouth which he never closed properly, and his teeth were very long and thin - more like needles really. Apart from a scaly body, which was not much bigger than a large potato, the rest of him was just legs. Triple jointed, they were. Four of them had sharp talons but the fifth was really strange: it was like a long thin strip of bone, but one edge was like the teeth of a wood saw.
'You won't last long in this house if you speak to me like that!' he warned, his voice almost a growl now. 'And as for telling Lizzie, you'd just be wasting your time. We're close and snug, just like brother and sister. If ever she needed to choose between you and me, you'd be the one whose bones would go into the pot! You're new and still wet behind the ears, so I'll give you just one more chance. But ever behave like that again and you are dead - make no mistake about it!'
That said, Spig leaped from the mantelpiece to the floor and scuttled across the kitchen, leaving a trail of gravy across the flags which I had to clean up after him.
* * *
Later, when Lizzie got back, I decided to tell her what Spig had done anyway.
'Eat up your stew, girl,' Lizzie commanded. 'Need to keep up your strength in our line of work.'
'Don't fancy it much. Old Spig jumped in it and ate some. Put me right off it.'
'Creature needs to eat too. Can't blame him for that. Not his favourite meal though. When he's not after blood, Old Spig likes to eat brains. Human ones are best but he'll make do with sheep and cows. Once he was so desperate he cut off the top of a hedgehog's head and tried to crawl in. Funniest thing you ever saw.'
I couldn't touch the stew; I left Lizzie eating her supper and went to bed early. At the top of the stairs I found someone standing outside my room. It was Nanna Nuckle, and she didn't look happy. She stepped to one side as I reached for the door handle, but then, when I crossed the threshold, gave me a slap across the back of my head so hard that it almost knocked me into the middle of next week.
'What was that for?' I asked angrily as I regained my balance.
'It's for giving me cheek, girl. I won't tolerate cheek!' With that Nanna Nuckle stomped along the landing to her own room. I hadn't given her cheek, I thought to myself. What on earth was she on about?
The following morning Lizzie started to teach me all about plants and herbs. To my surprise, it wasn't just about stopping enemies' hearts or cankering their brains. She taught me about healing too. And some plants were both good and bad.
One of those was called 'mandrake': eating it could make you fall unconscious; too much and you'd never wake up; or it could drive you absolutely mad. But it could also purge poisons and take away the pain from a bad tooth. Lizzie said its roots were shaped like a human body and it shrieked when you dragged it from the ground. I'd have liked to see one of them, but Lizzie said they were rare in the County.
'You never know when this will come in useful, girl,' she told me, pointing to a black-ink sketch of an elder leaf. 'The plant has white flowers and red or blue berries, and can cure rheumatic pain and ease heart problems. It rallies the dying too, giving them new vigour. Once in a while some even make a full recovery. If you or another witch were suffering and close to death, this would revive you.'
I wasn't allowed to write any of this information down though - Lizzie said I had to develop my memory. She said a witch needed to keep most of her spells in her head so she didn't need to waste time looking things up in books again. Lizzie had to go out again that afternoon; she told me to use her library and learn what I could about toadstools.
It wasn't much of a library - just two shelves of mildewed books down in the cellar. I put my candle on the table and looked along the first row, reading the spines. Three of 'em were grimoires covered in cobwebs - books of dark magic spells. I found the book on toadstools and pulled it off the shelf - but then I noticed something else: Familiars: Good Practice and Bad Habits.
That sounded a lot more interesting than reading about toadstools. I wanted to find out more about Old Spig, and this was my chance! So I picked up the book and started to leaf through it.
The introductory section was all about the different types of familiar and their suitability for different purposes. I found out that toads were good familiars for old witches who were long past their best, but that water witches in their prime used them all the time because they were suited to a wet and boggy environment.
I also read about how a witch got herself a familiar. You had to tempt it with blood. Most witches started by feeding it from a dish, but some made a small cut on their upper arm and let it suck the blood out directly from their flesh. Eventually, after months of that, a small nipple developed, making it easier for the familiar to draw out the blood. It was a bit like a mother feeding her baby, but really weird. Didn't really want to be a witch, did I? But if it ever happened, I certainly wouldn't be one who used familiar magic.
I flicked through the book faster, trying to find out what Old Spig was. No sign of him at first, but then I came to the last chapter, which was very long. It was called 'The Highest and Most Dangerous Categories of Familiar'.
Lots of strange creatures there, including boggarts and water beasts which I'd already heard of. As for some of the others, I didn't even know that they existed in our world. Maybe some came through portals from the dark, but I didn't have time to read it all and find out.
The opening paragraph contained a warning:
These types of familiar are difficult to control and can present serious dangers to a witch who employs one in her service. Frequently the creature becomes threatening and, over time, the familiar often assumes the dominant role. The witch then becomes the servant.
Then I came to a whole page of sketches. Whoever wrote the book had done a little drawing of each category with the name underneath and a page reference.
Old Spig was there. He was what they called a 'brain guzzler'. I was just turning to the page to find out more when I was suddenly interrupted.
There was a tremendous anguished cry from somewhere upstairs. It sounded like someone had been hurt badly. Lizzie had gone out, so who could it be? Nanna Nuckle?
After the way she'd clouted me the previous night it wouldn't have bothered me if she'd fallen down stairs and broken her blooming neck, but I left the cellar and went to find out what had happened. She wasn't in the kitchen or the gloomy front room. Neither was she lying dead at the bottom of the stairs. A pity, that! So I went up to her room. The door was open and I could see her sitting on a chair next to her bed. I gasped in horror at what I saw. I couldn't believe what had happened to her. It was just too horrible… I started shaking all over.
The top of her head had been sliced off and was hanging forward over her face, held on by just a bit of skin. And the inside of her skull was empty. Old Spig had killed her! He'd guzzled her brains!
I ran down the stairs in a panic, desperate to get as far away as possible. What if Spig was still hungry and he wanted my brains too? I might well be next.
I ran out into the woods and hid amongst the trees, waiting for Lizzie to return. She'd know what to do. Soon it started to rain and I got soaked to the skin, but I was too scared to take shelter back in Lizzie's house.
Lizzie didn't come back until well after dark. I heard her coming through the trees towards the house and rushed to meet her. It was the nearest I ever came to being glad to see her.
'What ails you, girl?' she shouted as I
ran towards her.
'Old Spig has killed Nanna Nuckle!' I gasped out. 'He's sliced open the top of her head and eaten her brains!'
Lizzie came to a halt, but instead of being shocked and outraged, she started to laugh. It was loud, wild laughter that could have been heard for miles. Then she grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me back towards the house. We went straight up to Nanna Nuckle's room.
To my surprise, the woman was sleeping in her chair, snoring away, with her head slumped forward onto her chest, her long grey hair hanging down like a dirty curtain almost as far as the floor.
'But I saw it!' I protested. 'She was dead and her head was wide open and her skull was empty.'
Instead of replying, Lizzie stepped forward and eased away the curtain of hair to show a red line around the top of Nanna Nuckle's head.
'Old Spig's inside her head now, fast asleep. I'd show you how cosy he is but it's best not to disturb him. Likes his rest, he does.'
'So he has eaten her brains?'
'That's true enough, girl, but it happened long ago. To be truthful, Nanna Nuckle didn't have many brains left to eat. She was getting forgetful and couldn't concentrate. But she was still strong, and that big body can do lots of useful chores for me, like lifting heavy iron pots when I mix up my potions and poisons. So I let Spig guzzle her brains. It's a good arrangement: he finds it cosy inside her head - once inside he can look through her eyes, hear what she hears and talk using her voice. So he uses Nanna Nuckle's body to do heavy work for me. It's a good arrangement. Old Spig spends about half his time in there.'
'But I heard her cry out in pain last night. That's why I went upstairs to her room.'
'Nanna Nuckle isn't there any longer, but when Spig opens up her skull to climb in or out, her body feels the pain and sometimes gives a gasp or even screams if Spig's a bit rough. Anyway, now you know, girl. So take care and do as I say. That big old body is starting to slow down and Old Spig will be looking for a replacement soon. Best make sure it's not you, girl!'