 
A Guide for Young Wytches

Jon Jacks
Other New Adult and Children's books by Jon Jacks

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll's Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun

Text copyright© 2015 Jon Jacks

All rights reserved

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Thank you for downloading this ebook. It remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

Thank you for your support.

# Chapter 1

To open your heart to love or align yourself to your spiritual development, create a talisman of Hawthorn (May Tree, or White Thorn).

A Guide for Young Wytches

The way Richard had described it, I was expecting a much more foreboding castle.

It must be a quite magical place to live in. It was far more like one of those fairytale-like castles rich German princes had built in the nineteenth century, rather than Richard's 'impregnable fortress'.

Certainly, it was positioned seemingly precariously on a hard-to-access peak in the mountains. Its walls, too, were sheer and massive. It would have blended seamlessly into the rock, were it not for a covering of sparkling white paint.

Snow was falling now, giving the whole scene the appearance of a beautifully constructed snow-globe.

Even my taxi driver whistled in appreciation at the castle's majesty, despite his assurances earlier that he had often made this journey.

He did, however, seem to understand the complicated procedures for entering the castle. He waited patiently while a drawbridge slowly lowered into place, politely informing the man who answered the entryphone that, yes, this was an approved visit.

Smoothly swinging into the large courtyard lying beyond the drawbridge's twin towers, the driver pulled up before the long, winding flight of steps running up towards the castle's main doors.

I'd expected people to be there to greet me, yet the door was closed. Many of the nearby windows were even shuttered.

As I stepped from the taxi, I felt a little anxious.

Had I made a mistake? Had I come on the wrong day? Perhaps I'd even arrived at the wrong castle?

As I settled the bill with the driver, however, and he unloaded my suitcase from the back of his car, the huge, double doors at last opened.

'Sorry, I need to rush back,' the driver apologised in his harshly accented yet otherwise amazingly good English.

'Before the snow gets worse and blocks me in,' he hurriedly added as he quickly slipped back into his seat.

The taxi was already disappearing across the drawbridge into the swiftly stirring snow as an elegantly slim woman imperiously descended the steps.

As she drew ever closer, she glowered at me evermore intensely.

'And _you_ are...?' she demanded sternly.

*

# Chapter 2

The Sixth consonant of the Ogham alphabet, uathe (Hoo-ah), represents the energy of cleansing and preparation.

It grants patience and clarity, clearing the mind of negative thoughts and confusion.

A Guide for Young Wytches

Maybe I should have been angry with the driver for leaving me with my heavy suitcase to drag up the steps; but having seen the narrow passes we'd travelled through, I could well understand his urgency to get back down into the far-off valley. The increasingly vigorous snowstorm would soon make everything impassable.

Besides, like me the driver had probably expected such a huge castle to be serviced by a staff of ever-helpful servants. Staff who saw it as their only aim in life to please and ensure the total wellbeing of the castle's guests.

Instead, the only person I'd seen here was this amazingly unfriendly woman. She did nothing more than sneer at me as I struggled with my case.

She had glared resentfully at the rapidly vanishing taxi, as if contemplating calling it back and ordering it to immediately whisk me back down towards the valley's sole and lonely town. It was too far gone for the driver to hear her, however; so she'd taken to asking me unnerving questions instead.

'What _are_ you doing here? Don't you realise you have to be _invited_ to the castle?'

'Richard invited me; Richard Leon. He said he lived here – that he _owned_ the castle!'

Even as I made my reply, I abruptly realised how unlikely all this sounded.

That a boy so young owned such a magnificent castle.

That he would just invite me on a whim to stay here; a girl he had met on holiday and known only for one afternoon, one evening.

That any girl who knew so little about a boy would accept such an unlikely invitation. Especially when there was no written agreement, bar an address scrawled across a handy envelope.

Had I been taken in by a boy simply trying to impress me with false tales of a fortune and great, ancient estates?

Yet when I'd mentioned Richard's name, the woman thankfully hadn't stared at me as if she had no idea whom I could be referring to.

Even so, she had stared at me as if she thought such a scenario was highly unlikely.

'Well you _can't_ stay!' she snapped. 'I've no idea _what_ he was thinking, inviting you here! We'll have to phone the hire firm, recall your taxi.'

'But can't I at least see Richard to–'

She cut me short with a glower.

Behind the doors there lay a surprisingly vast entrance hall, with yet another set of steps gracefully rising up to the next level.

The whole scene, however, was dominated by a towering Christmas tree. It was so huge I felt sure that it must have been taken from amongst the forests of darkly-packed firs we'd passed on our way up here.

At least, the unfriendly woman had realised that I would undoubtedly freeze to death if I'd been left outside.

So, instead, she left me here in this looming hall, were I would merely freeze off my toes.

I had wondered why such an otherwise expensively attired and elegantly poised woman was wearing boots rather than preposterously high heels, until I felt the freezing draughts swirling everywhere throughout the hall.

All the sounds around me echoed hollowly. The woman's footsteps dully clopped on the stone as she left the hall and strode off into one of the many rooms leading off from it.

She left the door to the room open, no doubt so I could hear as she picked up a phone and angrily demanded that the taxi turn around to pick me up and take me away.

I should have known all this was too good to be true: a ridiculously handsome boy inviting me to come and stay at one of Germany's most ludicrously beautiful castles.

Despite my sour mood – my fury with Richard for his useless invite, my sense of irredeemable stupidity for innocently acting on it – I was entranced by the sparkling glory of the Christmas tree.

It had been painstakingly and lovingly decorated in a staggeringly beautiful style, with all manner of glistening decoration hanging from it.

I refuse to use the term 'bauble' when it comes to a Christmas tree's decorations. Where I come from, we still use the ancient term wassail cups, or wassail balls, recalling when actual cups of welcoming and celebration would be hung throughout the tree.

I find it a far more fitting description of the deliciously intricate and thoughtfully designed ornaments of glass, wood or ceramics that a Christmas tree is so carefully strewn with.

The tree was clothed in classical style, with garlands, crackers, toys and gifts scattered throughout branches already dripping with balls of brightly coloured glass, and tipped with pure white candles.

Even so, I had a strange sense that there was something missing, despite my uncertainty as to what it could possibly be that made me regard this stunningly beautiful tree in this oddly unnerving way.

It took me quite a while of study for me to finally realise why this apparently perfect tree gave me this feeling of incompleteness; it lacked a star, a fairy, or perhaps one of those almost Oriental-style ornaments that are normally used to grace a tree's top as a final, finishing flourish.

In this case, however, I was certain that it actually lacked none of these – for what it truly lacked was an angel, one that had been used for generations: and its absence was a cause of great worry to the castle.

*

How could I be so sure that the tree lacked an angel, rather than a fairy or a star?

How, even more amazingly – perhaps _ridiculously_ – could I be sure that the angel's disappearance was a source of anguish?

Well, of course, I couldn't be sure at all.

And yet...I had a deep sense of unease, a feeling that all this was _indeed_ the case. To the extent that I resolved to ask the sour-faced woman, on her return, if the tree was usually topped by an angel. No matter how rude or stupid she took me to be.

There was the clack of footsteps on stone once more, the sound – I presumed – of the woman returning from making her phone call. (I had already discovered that cellphones refused to work out here when I had tried to use mine to notify the castle of my imminent arrival.) Yet there was also the squeak of a door on the floor just above me, the more laboured footsteps of a second person heading – it seemed to me – towards the top of the stairs.

'Your taxi refuses to return!' the woman snapped irately as she stormed into the room. 'Some nonsense about the snow being too bad for– Richard! What _are_ you doing out of your room?'

Her furious glare was now directed towards the very top of the winding stairs rather than at me. Following her gaze, I gasped as a sadly dishevelled figure, hunched over metallic crutches, exhaustedly staggered towards the stairs' uppermost step.

It was Richard.

But a Richard I hardly recognised; because he was undoubtedly incredibly ill.

*

I dashed up the stairs, frightened that Richard might fall. He looked so dazed, so unsteady on his feet.

Behind me, I could hear that the woman had also broken into a run, no doubt as concerned as I was that he might uncontrollably slip forward too much at any moment.

'Richard, Richard!' I cried out anxiously as I ran towards him. 'What's _happened_ to you?'

I slipped my arms around him as gently yet firmly as I could, supporting him as I pulled him back from the step's edge.

'What's _happened_ to him?' The woman frowned in irate puzzlement as she helped move Richard clear of the top of the stairs. 'He's been ill for _years_ , you silly girl!'

So even though I _haven't_ asked about the missing angel, this obnoxious woman still manages to find a reason to call me stupid.

'That's _not_ possible–'

'I'm afraid Lisa's right!'

It's Richard's rasping chuckle, not the woman's retort, that interrupts my protest.

'I'm so glad,' he continued hurriedly, before either this Lisa or I could speak, 'you could come, though, aahh...'

He gasps, as if in agony. Yet I feel certain that this is just his way of covering up his failure to recall my name.

He stares, wide-eyed, into my own eyes. It could be a look of pain. Yet there's a pleading glow to those eyes, as if he's hoping to convey a silent request to play along with him.

He accompanied the look with a tight grip to the top of my hand, seemingly all part once again of an overall message that we're involved in a conspiracy that has to be hidden from Lisa.

'How did you invite her?' Lisa demanded sternly. 'Was it the internet again? Do we have to start tracking your use of that too, Richard?'

_Tracking_? Is he a _prisoner_ here?

But how could he be? I saw him only two weeks back, holidaying in Corfu.

Yet if he's been _this_ ill, and for years too – then just _how_ could that be possible?

*

# Chapter 3

If you're feeling oppressed, placing Rowan Berries (or Sorb Apples) in a pouch worn next to your skin helps promote your psychic abilities, weakening any sense of victim consciousness that may have entrapped you.

A Guide for Young Wytches

Richard was too ill to walk unaided.

He was no longer using his crutches to help him walk. He required the support of both Lisa and myself to carefully guide him back towards the open door leading off the landing. It appeared to be his room.

On this level, I could look directly out across the top of the Christmas tree. From here it was even plainer that something was missing, something to literally top everything off.

The uppermost branches appeared surprisingly bare, even physically naked, without some form of elaborate dressing enabling it all to blend in seamlessly with the rest of the tree.

As I turned back to helping Richard, I caught once again a knowing glint in his eyes, as if he had caught me staring at this blank space of the otherwise remarkably beautiful tree.

I could have been imagining it, yet I flattered myself I sensed within him that same, strange anxiety over the angel's disappearance. That intense feeling that its absence was regarded as some form of ill omen for the castle

Within the room we entered, there was a gloriously large bed, with elaborately wrought ends. The bed clothes had been thrown back, the sheets badly crumpled as if the result of a restless sleep.

We gently eased Richard into the bed. As I plumped up the numerous pillows behind him, enabling him to sit up in bed, Lisa reached for an embroidered bellpull – but Richard raised a hand, stopping her from pulling down on it.

'No, Lisa – I don't need a maid, thank you.'

Lisa grimaced, the expression of someone unconvinced that this was a wise move.

The mention of the maid at least reassured me that this vast castle did, after all, have a staff to maintain and run it: though if the numbers of staff were adequate to running it, of course, I still remained unsure.

'I'm fine, I'm fine,' Richard insisted with a poor attempt at a reassuring smile. 'I'd just like a little time to talk to...'

As he'd spoken, Richard had once again had that pleading glint in his eyes; a plea to me to help him recall my name.

'Oh, I'm Danny – _Daniella_ – Oaten,' I said breezily to Lisa, turning to her with a hand proffered for a handshake, as if politely introducing myself to her.

Lisa stared at my hand as if it were the filthiest, most untouchable thing she had ever set her eyes on.

'There's no need for _introductions_ , young lady: we'll have you out of here and back down in the town as soon as we can!'

Richard chuckled once more. But it was harsh and rasping yet again, like someone fighting for breath.

'Lisa, that's hardly a way to treat an _invited_ guest,' he declared, gently admonishing her. 'I bet you haven't even offered poor Danny any refreshment after a long journey here, have you?'

No, she hadn't, I realised. I realised, too, that I was hungry and, in particular, thirsty. It _had_ been a long journey here.

'I'll call the maid...' Lisa sighed wearily, with no trace of embarrassment

Richard waved a hand, stopped her from reaching once more for the bellpull.

'The maid brought up more than I can manage on my own only a few moments ago.'

With another wave of his hand, he indicated a nearby table topped with a massive silver tray full of sandwiches, slivers of cake, and an untouched cup standing alongside a still-steaming teapot.

'Is tea okay for you Danny?' he asked, grinning crookedly when I nodded my approval. 'Strange: I normally order coffee, rather than tea.'

'She can eat _downstairs_ , Richard! You need some sleep to–'

'Lisa! Please – I've had more than _enough_ sleep, thank you!'

He briefly paused, as if considering something, then quickly continued with a slightly ashamed tone.

'Although – what _am_ I thinking? Of course, you _do_ need to talk to the maid, Lisa! Danny will need a room preparing for–'

'A _room_?' Lisa was aghast. 'She's not intending to stay _that_ long!'

She sort of glowered my way, as if expecting me to back her up on this assertion.

Richard grinned, obviously highly amused by Lisa's reaction.

'You must forgive Lisa,' he said to me. 'She means well; she thinks my illness is down to visitors, even though I never have any here!'

'You're not _well_ enough to see anyone!' she pointed out.

'Well, now I've invited Danny – how long was it for, two weeks? – I'll be seeing a _lot_ of her!'

'Two weeks!' Lisa's eyes opened wide in horror.

I managed to keep my urge to smile in check. The original invite had originally been for one week, not two.

I still remained unsure why Richard still seemed unable to recall either our earlier meeting, or his invitation to visit him here; perhaps it was something to do with his illness.

As for Lisa's insistence that Richard was too ill to travel; well, although his condition at present would certainly back her up on that, it may well be that he had deteriorated to this sad state only recently.

Perhaps, too, Lisa wasn't aware of _everything_ Richard did – it could well be that she, too, had gone on a holiday or for a break; and Richard could have seen it as an opportunity to also leave the castle for a while.

'It might be longer than that,' Richard added, staring out through the tall windows gracing the farthest wall, taking in the swirling snow fluttering against the glass. 'If the snow continues to fall.'

The snow was managing to lie thickly even against the smooth panes of glass, freezing in place there as soon as it struck. Beyond, the courtyard was now invisible, veiled by the swiftly whirling flakes.

Lisa pouted miserably, as if finally resigned to her fate of allowing me to stay at least one night with them.

'I'll have a room made up,' she sighed morosely, turning to leave.

Before leaving, however, she glanced back over her shoulder, her expression once more that of a stern dominatrix.

'As soon as the snow eases, though – I'm calling the taxi back to whisk her away as swiftly as she arrived here!'

*

Richard grinned happily at me as Lisa closed the door behind her.

'Well, you've only been here a few minutes, Danny; and you've already upset the neat order of the place.'

'I don't want to cause any trouble...' I apologised nervously.

Why had I come here without making any official checks? Without ensuring that I'd actually be welcomed by everyone else who lived in such a great castle?

I had to be sure that I really _had_ been invited to stay here.

'Richard, did you sneak away on holiday without telling Lisa?'

Richard shook his head.

'Lisa's right when she's says I've been too ill to leave the castle for a long time now.'

'But I _saw_ you, I _talked_ to you! At the Imperia Hotel in Corfu!'

'Maybe it was a boy pretending to be me?'

He said it in a tone that subtly asked if I'd considered this.

'A boy who just happens to look _exactly_ like you?'

He shrugged, as if he thought this was a trivial matter.

'Haven't you seen that movie? What was it – _The Talented Mr Ripley_? It can pay people handsomely to impersonate boys more fortunate than themselves; such as, for instance, impressing beautiful girls?'

He smiled kindly, his way, I was sure, of removing any barbs from his comment that implied I was either foolish or impressed by wealth rather than character. It was a smile that said his emphasis was on the 'beautiful'.

'I should leave,' I said, hanging my head.

I was ashamed that I had been fooled, that I had been taken in by a boy simply because he was handsome, innocently believing that he was supposedly fabulously wealthy.

'Even if I _wanted_ you to leave, I'd have to be especially cruel to throw you out into weather like this!'

With a nod of his head, he indicated the snowstorm that was now rushing angrily towards the looming windows.

'But if you _didn't_ invite me, why did you imply to Lisa that you _had_?'

'One of the most beautiful girls I've ever seen turns up on my doorstep, and I'm supposed to turn her away? I'm _ill_ , Danny – not an idiot! When I saw you; well, I wanted to hear you were planning on staying here for ever!'

Now I'm hanging my head to hide my blushes.

'Well, obviously _I'm_ an idiot,' I mumbled from beneath my shielding curtain of long hair. 'What would have happened if I'd turned up here on a false invite and you hadn't been so kind and thoughtful?'

'Hmn, now _there_ you do have a point,' he agreed. 'A boy invites you to stay and you don't make any checks? You don't get anything in writing, confirming your visit – or, indeed, that it's safe for you to visit? And what of your parents, Danny: didn't they point out it was foolish just taking the word of a boy you met on holiday?'

I opened my mouth, prepared to explain.

Yet no words came out.

Because I had absolutely no idea why my parents hadn't stopped me coming here.

*

# Chapter 4

After asking the permission of a Willow (Tree of Enchantment, or Moon Tree, and sacred to the White Lady), select a pliable shoot and tie a loose knot in it while expressing your wish or desire.

Untie the knot when the wish is fulfilled, leaving a gift and thanking the tree for its help.

A Guide for Young Wytches

As Richard had advised, we had eaten and taken tea as we'd talked.

Naturally, I'd asked about the missing angel.

He didn't sound surprised that I'd guessed it should be an angel gracing the tree's top – I suppose there's a very good chance that it _would_ be an angel, of course – and neither did he sound in anyway as perturbed as I'd expected when I'd mentioned its absence.

It had simply gone missing this year, he'd explained calmly. And they were keeping the space clear in the hope that it would turn up somewhere.

I'd also asked how Lisa had known to address me in English, if no one had been expecting me. Lisa was very observant, he'd replied; the way I dress, the colours of the airline tags on my suitcase, were all pointers to parts of my character to anyone as perceptive as her.

As I'd bit into a juicy fig, he'd told me something I would have preferred not to know: the sweetness of its centre is all down to a female wasp long ago attracted into and trapped within the nascent fruit.

When Richard started displaying obvious signs of fatigue, I said I'd call in on him later, once I'd settled into the room being prepared for me by Lisa and the maids. I closed the door quietly behind me, glancing once more towards the tree's naked top.

The nearest ornament to the top was a large glass ball of a glistening light blue, shinning like an encapsulated orb of morning sky. As I strode along the graceful curve of the landing, I caught the changing reflections within that sparkling blue. It all gave the appearance that the ball was trembling, shaking on its branch as if far too delicately positioned to be secure.

The more I stared it, the more the ball shook.

It jerked, quite violently.

Either the thread holding it to the branch snapped, or it slipped free of the stem it had been hanging on.

Either way, the ball abruptly dropped from the branch.

It fell upon the branch lying just below, only to roll off that and drop towards an even lower one.

And so it began its fall towards the ground, gaining in speed with every branch it fell from.

*

I broke into a run, dashing headlong, incredibly carelessly, down the stairs.

I hoped I could get to the base of the tree before the ball smashed to the ground. But its fall was rapidly gaining in pace, the sparkle of blue descending through the branches of darkest green, the ornaments of every colour imaginable.

I arrived at the base of the tree, but was momentarily confused, wondering which way the packed branches would send the ball falling.

I rushed more towards the back of the tree, the side closest to the wall, quickly determining that this was the most likely place for the ball to fall.

The ball shuddered as it struck another branch. It bounced slightly, fell over the side I wasn't expecting it to.

I reached out desperately, the ball at last falling from the last branch with nothing more to soften its drop.

My fingers stretched out, touched the edge of the falling ball – and my hand felt the almost weightless orb of blown glass plump satisfactorily into my palm.

I grinned triumphantly. I'd never, ever, made such an accomplished catch. The ball glistened in my hand as if it were a trophy.

Behind me, there was a creak of wood. A cold gust against the back of my shins caused me to shiver.

Turning, I discovered a small, surprisingly plain door that had previously been hidden behind the tree's massed branches.

It was slightly open. Perhaps my running around here had caused the floorboards to flex, the door to move slightly.

I was about to close the door when I noticed a flash of silver coming from its otherwise dark interior. A moving flash, too, and one that seemed to hover briefly through the air.

In fact, if I hadn't known it was impossible, I would have sworn I'd just seen a miniature angel, soaring through the room.

*

# Chapter 5

'The Moon owns the Willow' – and so a wand of Willow helps with intuition, dreams, and visions, as well as healing emotional problems or releasing tension.

Place it under your pillow then, before you go to sleep, focus on ensuring your dreams are more vivid and meaningful.

A Guide for Young Wytches

Still clutching the looped string – it hadn't snapped after all – of the glistening wassail ball, I pushed the door open a little more.

I stepped inside, expecting the small room to be too dark for me to see anything clearly.

The light constantly reflecting from the ball was strangely bright enough, however, for me to use it as if it were a candle. It lit my way as I cautiously strode farther into the room.

The ball's flickering rays were themselves reflected back, transformed from sky blue to more silvery hues – the silver (or rather the blinding whites, contrasted with ebony details) of the angel, lying on top of what appeared to be a small yet incredibly ancient box.

Naturally, it wasn't a real angel. An expensive mix of detailed ceramics and fine lace, it was just over a foot high. It was the type of ornamental angel anyone would be more than happy to see gracing the top of their Christmas tree.

Surely, though, this couldn't be the castle's 'missing' angel?

It was hardly missing, after all, lying plainly in view in a storeroom leading off the main hall.

Perhaps this was a spare decoration, left aside in the hope that the more traditionally used angel would still turn up somewhere.

I glanced about the room. What had made me think I'd seen this angel flying?

Lifting my sparkling ball a little higher, to cast its light around the room, I saw other reflective surfaces; objects haphazardly leant against the walls, or stacked on old shelves.

Obviously, the light from outside had caught these surfaces, briefly granting them a new, sparkling life. After my panicked run – the blood surging through my head, my eyes – I'd been a little dizzy, enough to cause me to see these flashes as a soaring angel.

Bringing the reflected light of the ball back towards the angel, I turned to take a more detailed look at it.

But the angel was no longer there.

It had vanished.

*

# Chapter 6

A wand of Rowan (Wychwood, or Sorb Apple) grants an increased awareness of all our senses and abilities, as well as of outside influences affecting us that we may previously have been unaware of.

A Guide for Young Wytches

I quickly looked either side of the box, checking that the angel hadn't fallen there.

Nothing.

Just how dizzy had my rush down the stairs made me?

Had I really just imagined that I'd seen the angel lying here?

I realised, too, that it wasn't even a box that the now supposedly vanished angel had been lying on. It was a book.

A Guide for Young Wytches.

The cover was soft to the touch, it was so old and worn.

I flipped back the cover, opening the book on a page with a handwritten scrawl.

'This book belongs to Mary Ibbots, December 1936.'

1936? A long time ago, surely. Yet I would say the book appeared even older than that, much older.

I flicked over a clutch of pages, taking a quick look at the contents. It seemed to be a book of simple spells; tips on making wands, the rules of a strange, unrecognisable alphabet.

A children's book, possibly. In English too, strangely.

Wondering if it would be all right for me to take it, I glanced about the room once more, to see if it really was full of unwanted, discarded objects.

I jumped up in fright, instinctively clutching at the book, protectively bringing it up in front of my face – and then, seeing what had scared me so much, I burst into laughter at my own stupidity.

For a moment, I thought I'd seen a witch watching me, a witch like you see in children's books, with the tall, black, crooked hat. But it was only my reflection in a large yet remarkably filthy mirror, my 'hat' being the grime smeared across the top of the glass.

I was about to put the book back down, realising the right thing to do was ask if I could borrow it, when I had the strange sense that I was arriving at the castle once more.

I'm in the back of the car; a different car, though.

An older style of car.

Yet in all other ways, the scene looks and feels exactly as it did when I arrived here only an hour or so ago.

The swirling snow. The looming, white castle.

My curiosity. My excitement, my nervousness. This sense that I'm embarking on this great adventure.

But no, _no_!

There _is_ something different.

I feel _fear_.

More fear than I ever felt in my entire life!

*

# Chapter 7

To purify an atmosphere, burn Oak leaves.

A Guide for Young Wytches

The room Lisa had prepared for me was outrageously gorgeous.

Like Richard's room – and despite the fact we seemed to be in different sections of the castle's keep – the end of my room had towering windows. They also looked out over part of the snow swept courtyard, albeit from much higher up.

The higher outer walls of the castle still dominated the view, however. They stretched so high they thwarted any attempt I made to view their tops by crouching close to the windows.

My attempts did reward me, though, when I looked down as opposed to up. This presented me with a view of an elaborately organised garden. The type with geometrically formed borders, hedges, and even bushes and trees.

With its thick sheen of snow, it appeared as something more akin to a highly complicated board game rather than a construct of nature.

A magpie sullenly hopped from one hedge top to another. The black and white of his feathers caused parts of his body to apparently disappear, as he either flew from one place to another, or turned around on a branch or thickly meshed bush.

The still falling snow distorted or dissolved his elements of darkness, transforming him into little more than geometric patterns in his own right.

I'd hidden the book I'd brought with me in a drawer beneath a few items of my unpacked clothes. The ball I'd hung back on the tree, on the highest branch I could reach without disturbing any other of the ornaments.

I'd regretted leaving it there as I'd walked away from it, feeling I was unjustly abandoning a friend who had helped me out, a source of light in an otherwise dark and foreboding place.

Even so, I would have liked to explore the castle a little more. It would be nice, for a start, to see if I could find any of the maids or servants I haven't as yet seen anywhere about the place.

I'm not sure, however, that Lisa would be happy to see me just wandering around.

Perhaps once I've seen Richard again, and got his permission to look around the place, she might be a little more willing to allow me a bit more of a free rein.

With nothing better to do, I decided to take another look at the children's book I'd found, wondering if it would have that same, odd effect it had had on me when I'd first picked it up.

Pulling open the drawer, flipping back the covering of clothes, I reached into the drawer for the book

A Guide for Aspiring Wytches.

Odd; I could have sworn it had said _young_ witches.

Before I could figure out how I could have made such a mistake, I heard the sound of footsteps drawing closer towards my door. I slipped the book back beneath the clothes, pushed the drawer closed.

With nothing more than a polite rap on the panelling, and without waiting for a reply or invitation to enter, Lisa opened the door and stepped into the room.

'I need to know _exactly_ who you are, girl!' she stormed. 'And why you're _really_ here!'

*

Lisa had checked the history and records of Richard's internet use.

He'd had no contact with any girls. And, of course, there was no invite from him for me to stay here.

Rather than being defensive, I could have gone onto the attack: accused her of being too domineering, allowing Richard no privacy, all that kind of thing.

Fortunately, I had enough sense to realise that ploy wouldn't work with Lisa.

And she _did_ have a point, didn't she? What _was_ I doing here?

'I'm sorry,' I said, realising honesty was the best policy as far as talking to Lisa was concerned. 'I met a boy on holiday who said he was Richard. I know I was foolish to take his word for it, but when he invited me out here–'

'Foolish?' Lisa's eyes were wide with disdain. 'I think it's far more than foolish to accept a boy's word – a boy whom you've only just met, and know little about – that he's wealthy enough to own a castle!'

I shrugged, hung my head ashamedly.

She was right again, wasn't she?

'I know, I know, I've been amazingly silly!' I admitted miserably. 'I'll leave as soon–'

'Yes, you _will_ , my girl! Fortunately for you, however, and unfortunately for us, the storm's getting worse; but as soon as it begins to clear – and as soon as the roads are cleared – then yes, I want you _out_ of here!'

I glanced over my shoulder, briefly taking in the now almost solid white of the whirling snow battering at my windows.

'If Richard didn't know you, why did he go along with this ridiculous idea that he'd invited you here?'

Lisa glowered at me with particular hatred as she asked this question.

'I suppose he's lonely–'

'Nothing to do with your remarkable beauty, naturally?' she sneered.

'I wouldn't say I was beautiful–'

'You don't have to – because you quite obviously _are_! For girls like you, everything in life comes so easily to you that you have no real understanding of the _real_ world!'

I couldn't understand why the way I looked irritated her so much. Did she feel that I'd unfairly entranced Richard?

Her bitterness when it came to beauty was particularly odd. Even now, despite her age, she was an amazingly attractive woman: effortlessly elegant, languidly graceful. In a way, too, that anyone might envy. She was sophisticated to a level few achieve, for it appeared so inherently natural.

When younger, she must have benefited from an admirable beauty in her own right.

Was that it? Did she resent that her beauty had – if not actually faded – had _changed_?

She must have seen the confusion and hurt in either my eyes or my shocked expression.

'You can see him,' she declared sternly, as if every word was being unfairly forced from her mouth. 'It _might_ help him. We can see how it goes.'

'Oh thank you, thank you so much!'

I was so relived that she had given me this unexpected concession that I almost reached out to grab her hands in my excitement.

'He _does_ seem lonely,' I added brightly. 'I can't understand why!'

'There's a lot you probably can't understand!' Lisa turned to leave. 'But that doesn't mean it has to be explained to you!'

*

# Chapter 8

At the time of a New Moon, carefully gather strips of bark from the White Birch (Lady of the Woods). Write 'Bring me true love' in red ink on a strip, then cast it into a stream of flowing water saying: 'Message of love, I set you free, to capture a love and return to me.' (Do _not_ direct your charm towards a specific person!)

A Guide for Young Wytches

When I visited Richard again, he was sitting up in bed, looking nowhere near as haggard as the last time I had seen him.

He looked, in fact, far more like the boy I had seen on holiday.

The boy who couldn't possibly have been him.

'And this boy who you say looked like me,' he asked after a few minutes of mainly polite conversation and small talk: 'did you _like_ him?'

'Yes, yes; very much,' I answered truthfully.

'You found him, er, ah...attractive?'

I nodded, smiled.

'Are you saying I'd just walk into any old castle of any boy I _didn't_ find attractive?'

'He'd have to be _incredibly_ charming to persuade you to come and visit him, I think. I envy him; to have such an effect on such...such a, er, beautiful girl.'

I smiled again.

'I think that if it _had_ been you who had invited me here, I would still have _definitely_ accepted.'

Now he was the one who smiled, obviously appreciating my flattery.

'What did he tell you about the castle?' he asked. 'Did he seem to know much about it?'

'Of course; that's what made it all seem all too believable. When I arrived here in the taxi, the castle was more or less as I'd expected it to look; well, apart from its immense size, its grandeur. _No_ description could prepare you for that!'

'He must have done an awful lot of research; but why? How would inviting you out to a castle he doesn't live in help him achieve anything?'

I hadn't really considered this point before.

'I suppose,' I answered, 'it was his way of ensuring I'd be impressed by him. Yet he was handsome, and, as you say, _very_ charming! I was interested in him _before_ he mentioned the castle.'

Richard pondered this for a moment.

'Perhaps he noticed a similarity to the way I looked long ago: and he's been playing this role for so long now, he's almost come to see himself as actually _being_ me!'

'Anyway, I'm grateful he _did_ make a fool of me; otherwise, I wouldn't be here, would I?'

He smiled again.

'Yes; whoever he is, I have a _great_ deal to thank him for, don't I?'

*

As I left Richard's room – Richard having decided that he needed to sleep once more – I was instantly hit with an irate glare from Lisa.

She was standing on the landing leading to the stairs, giving the impression that she'd been waiting there the entire time I'd been in Richard's room.

I smiled, yet didn't receive one back.

She icily walked past me, heading towards one of the hallways leading off from the almost circular landing. I made for the stairs, intending to head back to my room for a while.

I passed close by the bared top of the Christmas tree.

Yet it wasn't completely bare.

The sparkling blue wassail ball I had watched fall from the tree earlier was back in its original position.

*

# Chapter 9

To get a better view, we are prepared to move our position. So if we have a problem, we should also accept that it might change if we view it differently.

A Guide for Young Wytches

Of course, a highly attentive member of the staff might have noticed that I'd hung the beautifully glistening blue ball much lower down from where it had initially been hanging.

Yet why would anyone go to such remarkable trouble – it would have required the use of a large stepladder to reach up here – to re-hang a ball in its original place, as if every ornament had a specific, unchanging position on the tree?

Besides, just where were these highly attentive members of staff?

I still hadn't seen even one of them moving around the castle. I thought I'd _heard_ them working on a number of occasions, catching far off the drone of powerful vacuums, the clank of ceramics being replaced on mantelpieces and tables after cleaning and polishing; yet I still hadn't come across any actual people.

Passing a room in which I'd believed I'd heard maids giggling as they worked, I'd even quietly slipped the door open, hoping to catch them hard at work; yet the room had been entirely empty. It partially sparkled, however, as if I had interrupted a team as they'd begun cleaning the room.

The sounds I'd heard had also vanished on my opening of the door, leaving me wondering if I'd simply imagined it all.

As I passed this same room once more, I took another look inside. The cleaning that had been started earlier was now finished, everything there – the vast table, the matching wooden chairs, the surrounding furniture and ornaments – gleaming with heavily and expertly buffed polish.

I'd heard of palaces and castles that had special back stairs, even hidden passageways behind the walls, for the servants to go about their business without being seen. Was that all that I was witnessing here?

What was the alternative?

A magical, invisible staff?

*

I felt a sudden, cold draught run across the back of my neck.

Looking up towards the looming windows, I looked out yet again upon nothing more than an angry flurry of white.

Yet one of the uppermost and smaller windows was broken. And it wasn't just a crack, either. There was a reasonably large, jagged hole there. Snowflakes were streaming through, falling across part of the table.

It was odd that I hadn't noticed it before.

Then again, just how many more things am I going to remain oblivious to until they just about leap into and strike me across the face?

I seem to be walking around everywhere in a delirious dream, being only partially aware of my surroundings and situation.

I was dragged out of my admonishing thoughts and brought back into the real world by an irate squawk. There was an angry flutter of feathers, more squeals and squawks.

A flash of white, of black, rushing through the air almost in front of me.

The magpie.

Somehow, it had smashed its way through the upper window and ended up in here.

The mantelpiece of the huge, gaping fireplace was a mess. The ornaments gracing its top were all awry, some even in danger of toppling and falling to the floor.

Weren't magpies attracted to sparkling objects? Is that why it was in here?

Had it been searching for something to steal, something to take back to its nest?

I considered calling for a member of staff to help me chase the bird back outside.

One of those members of staff I'd never seen, never come across.

I started to shoo the bird myself, moving towards it, waving my arms. I was hoping I could somehow direct it back through the hole, rather than scaring it and making it cause even more damage in here.

Thankfully, I appeared to be dealing with a surprisingly intelligent bird.

It rose up towards the crooked hole. It vanished through it with nothing more than another irate squawk, this one apparently aimed back at me for disturbing it.

I dashed towards the fireplace, carefully moving the larger pieces back from their precarious positions near the shelf edge. There were also a lot of smaller, more jewel-like items that needed replacing in small, lidded bowls.

One of these, which I'd originally mistaken for a dull brooch, tingled sharply in my hand. I briefly feared that I'd stabbed myself on its pin.

But I was suddenly no longer standing within the room. I was, instead, peering out through heavily smeared glass; at a black and fiery landscape.

*

# Chapter 10

The earth below me would have been perfectly black but for the glowing reds and yellows of the intense fires.

There was a constant series of crumps, of cracks, many of which heralded the birth of a new fire.

The air around me shook. It wasn't easy keeping the small and flimsy plane I was piloting steady.

Instead of avoiding the burning city below me, I was deliberately dropping lower, lower, passing between the looming, dark shells of almost wholly destroyed buildings.

The strip of land cleared for my landing now lay directly ahead of me, lit by fiercely burning oil drums packed with rags. (Petrol was too expensive to waste, even for something as important as this.)

The flurry of snow beating against my plane's windshield was more dangerous than it had been when I was flying higher. It obstructed my view of what was already a dangerously narrow and short landing strip.

I brought the plane's wheels down as soon as I could, praying we weren't going to hit any loose rubble, any holes in the road the soldiers hadn't been able to pack with stones.

The wheel struts boasted truly remarkable suspension; yet even so, they struck the ground with a jolt that took the wind out of me.

From behind me, there was an echoing gasp.

A passenger; I have a passenger.

Yes, I remember now.

Not a 'he', but a 'she'.

What's she doing here? Why am I wasting precious time and petrol – maybe even my life! – to fly her in here?

She's English.

She made no effort to hide the fact. And yet it's the English, the Americans and the Russians who we we're fighting against.

Loosing badly against.

The airbrakes of my plane screamed as they fought to pull us up in time, to stop us careering into the piles of rubble blocking off most of the road.

The plane bounced, jerked, shuddered alarmingly.

For a brief second, as I always did when I landed here amongst Berlin's rubble-strewn streets, I feared that I'd taken one too many chances with my life.

But the plane at last began to slow, to stop, the tail dropping, the propeller slowing to a stuttering whine as I shut everything down. I used what little momentum I still had to violently skew the plane to one side, making it ready for a swift turnaround.

Even as my passenger and I threw open our doors, a small group of the waiting soldiers were running across the tarmac towards us.

Boots thudded on the road they'd painstakingly cleared of snow and ice to aid my landing. Weapons and belts clanked, despite the muting effects of their heavy if threadbare overcoats.

They all looked so old. Some of them, indeed, were very old, veterans of the last war conscripted for the final battle for Berlin.

Most had thick beards, the only way to keep out the intense cold when your uniforms are old and torn.

The men, like their uniforms, are remnants. Just about all that remains of an army once numbered in millions.

*

As the men help us to the ground, I spot something far worse than the conscription of old men: boy soldiers are rushing through the rubble. Too young, even, to carry their guns high enough to stop their butts striking the bricks and stones.

Those fortunate enough to have helmets rather than soft forage caps struggle to keep them level. Their young heads are too small. Their minute, scared if strangely determined faces are overshadowed by the overhanging iron.

As they pass by, they either glare or stare in bemusement at me, at my passenger; doubtlessly wondering what women are doing here in this very worst area of hell.

A tank stands nearby, massive and dark. It looms over these boys as they stoically lope towards where the fighting is hardest.

It gives them false confidence, the tank.

They don't know its petrol tank is probably near empty. Its ammunition shelves will be in an even worse state.

The tank itself is just one of a handful around here. No match at all for the superior numbers the Russians can throw at us.

Suddenly, coming from just beyond the idling tank, there's an irritated chatter of machine guns. The sharp crack of rifles, cries of horror and fear.

All this is nearer than the regular crump of explosions. It's an attack. And taking place shockingly close too.

I take out my pistol, looking out into the darkness where our soldiers are running back here, running for their lives.

Despite their exhaustion, their hunger, they're sprinting back towards us as if the hounds of Hell are after them.

When I hear the howls and snarls coming on ever closer behind them, I wonder if it is indeed hellhounds that have been released on our men, our boys, their granddads.

In the flickering red light coming from the handful of flaming oil drums yet to be doused, the massive wolf that leaps across the rubble could indeed be a hound from Hell.

He effortlessly brings down the poor boy whose back he leaps upon. With a snap of his immense maw, he snaps the boy's neck. He ignores my pistol shots, despite the blood abruptly spurting from each rapidly inflicted wound.

There are suddenly more of them, these wolves the size of lions. Swifter than cheetahs, more ravenous and merciless than tigers.

They explode out of the complete darkness lying outside of the sphere of light cast by the burning drums, ripping through the fleeing men, easily overtaking them. Easily bringing them down.

Some of the older, more experienced men turn to release a burst of machinegun fire at the wolf bearing down on them, the wolf leaping towards them. Yet just as the wolf who had killed the boy shrugged off my pistol shots, these wolves similarly ignore even the most vicious wounds to their bodies. Their minds are focused only on attacking, on killing, on riving throats clean away in a splatter of blood.

I'm just about to run myself, even though I know it's hopeless, that I'll never outrun these demonic wolves. Then, out of nowhere, there's a flash as blinding as a close strike of lightning.

Everywhere is abruptly lit up, as if by a segment of the sun fallen to Earth.

No matter where they are, no matter what they're doing, the wolves all instantly go limp. Toppling over. Falling out of the air, if in mid-leap.

As they fall, they transform, becoming in an instant naked men, naked women.

I whirl around, to see where this miraculous ball of light had emanated from.

It's the English woman; she's the source.

She still has her hands raised. Still has a grim smile.

And suddenly, I know what she's doing here.

She's a witch.

*

# Chapter 11

Making your Own Wand: Part 1

Creating your own wand will help you connect spiritually to the tree you took the wood from.

A Guide for Young Wytches

Back in my room, I sat on the edge of my bed, worried.

What's happening to me?

Why am I getting these flashbacks when– no, they're not _flashbacks_ , are they?

At least, they're not flashbacks to past events in _my_ life.

But then, what other word is there for such a phenomenon?

Even so, they're not even flashbacks to previous events within a _single_ person's life.

The girl in the car arriving at the castle was a different person to the woman piloting the plane.

I don't have any _proof_ of that, naturally.

It's just a _sense_ I have that that's the case.

I'd taken a closer look at what I'd originally taken to be a brooch. It wasn't a brooch, it was a medal.

A German medal, going by the inscription, the spread-winged eagle.

Whereas the book, the one that gave me the sense that I was arriving at the castle, is in English.

The _witch_? The passenger in the plane?

She was English.

Is _she_ the connection?

Yet the witch launching that ball of light was hardly a novice requiring a guide, was she? And this was despite her looking little older than sixteen.

Maybe she'd arrived at the castle at an earlier date to her appearance in Berlin's ruins?

Or maybe she'd just brought the book with her as a memento of her earlier days as a novice?

When she'd signed the book, it was nineteen thirty six.

The fall of Berlin – that's nineteen forty five.

So that would make her around seven when she signed the book.

I was sure, though, that it _wasn't_ a seven-year-old in the car arriving at the castle.

I stepped over towards the drawer where I'd hidden the witch's book.

As I threw back the veiling clothes, I also flipped the cover aside, intending to make sure that I'd remembered the date she'd scrawled there correctly.

But it isn't a scrawl across the page. It's neatly, even elegantly, written.

And the date now is '1940'.

I flip the cover closed once more.

It has a new title.

A Guide for Accomplished Wytches.

*

# Chapter 12

Wands of Ash are good for healing and solar magic.

A Guide for Young Wytches

There's an angry flutter of white against my windows.

This time, it's not just the snow however.

There are feathers amongst that blinding white swirl.

White and black feathers.

The magpie.

It caws, flies off. Vanishing into the flurry of rapidly falling snow.

I dashed towards the window, peering out as intently as I could into the swirling snow. I could just make out the silhouette-like black shapes of the magpie as it headed towards the garden.

Sections of the garden had been cleared of their covering of deep snow. The odd hedge, a few of squared-off borders. Certain areas of the path.

They appeared dark, almost black against those areas still veiled by the snow. It appeared more than ever like a vast game board.

And even though the snow was still drifting in heavily, those dark areas remained perfectly clear, almost perfectly black.

And each was a perfect square. Even a perfect cube or rectangle, if you took into account the way the darkness continued up each bush, each tree.

*

'Do people clear certain parts of the garden for some reason?'

I was with Richard again. We'd gone through the small talk, the greetings, the 'How are you settling in?' type of questions.

He seemed puzzled by my latest query.

'Not that I know of,' he answered. 'I can't see that there'd be much point; it would be instantly covered in snow again in weather like this.'

Unfortunately, we can't see the garden from his window. So I don't have any way of proving to him that the snow doesn't seem to be falling in the areas already cleared.

Rather than attempting to explain the reason for my question, I decided to see if there was anything odd about the castle or its history.

'The boy who was pretending to be you,' I began, 'he said that the castle's medieval, not Victorian as most people presume.'

Richard nodded in agreement.

'It seems that this doppelganger of mine did his homework; most people _do_ assume it's one of those later nineteenth century constructions that look wonderful but have no real military history of even use – castles that would be no more useful than a fairytale for holding back an enemy. Roxen castle – _my_ castle – however, well: it has incredibly solid walls that could probably hold off even the most determined siege of a medieval army. There were battles around here; very ferocious ones, too, by all accounts. But the details on who was fighting whom is all a bit sketchy, I'm afraid – apart from the fact that it was my ancestors holding the castle, naturally! It's all so long ago, when record keeping was flimsy at best, and more usually nothing more than lies and malicious propaganda!'

With Richard's mention of his ancestors, it abruptly dawned on me that I had no idea what any of his family, past or present, looked like; unlike most great families still living in a home passed down through the generations, they apparently weren't interested in preserving their likenesses in the huge portraits you'd normally find gracing the hallways of such a grand castle.

Perhaps due to its situation high in the mountains, its draughty corridors, the castle didn't provide the ideal conditions for preserving paintings, which required specific temperatures and humidities if they weren't going to badly disintegrate.

'Where _are_ your parents, Richard? You never mentioned them on hol–'

I was about to say, 'on holiday', for I couldn't always separate in my mind the boy I'd met on Corfu from the real Richard; they really did look and even sound so remarkably alike, barring the real Richard's quite obvious weakness and illness.

Richard grinned. Naturally, he knew what I'd been about to say.

'They're dead, I'm afraid,' he replied, surprisingly coolly. 'Car accident – long ago.'

I gathered that he'd added the 'long ago' to explain his nonchalance over the matter.

'Sorry.' It was one of those situations where you can never be quite sure what else to say.

'I didn't really know them at all well, to be honest. I was very young when it happened. Fortunately, despite all appearances to the contrary, Lisa really cares for me; she made sure everything ran smoothly. Still does, of course.'

'Does...does she run it all on her own?'

Richard chuckled, stared at me wryly, as if wondering if I were joking or not.

'Good lord no!' he said firmly. 'Who _could_ run a castle like this on their own? Plus all the attendant estates, which bring in the rents and what have you. The castle alone needs a massive staff!'

'Well, yes, I thought that must be the case...yet, well – I haven't seen any so far.'

'There are hidden corridors everywhere for the staff to go about their business without interrupting a guest, such as yourself, Danny. It's like they say about a swan; all grace and effortlessness on the surface, but legs churning madly away beneath.'

'So...you've seen them, yes?'

If he'd looked at me a little doubtfully before, now his askew glance my way is full of both curiosity and disbelief.

'Well, of course _I_ see then, Danny! _I'm_ not a guest. Sometimes they have to report to me, sometimes Lisa isn't here – although, yes, that is thankfully rare – so they attend to me.'

'And your angel – your angel for the Christmas tree? Are any of your staff looking for it?'

His grin was partly suspicious smirk.

'Danny, why are you full of all these questions all of a sudden?'

'It's just that...that, you know – I've had these really weird experiences, like a déjà vu, or something like that.'

'I know a joke about déjà vu; but you've probably already heard it.'

I smiled, even though I was a little annoyed that he seemed to be avoiding answering my question.

I suppose, though, that I _was_ hitting him with too many questions!

'But, the angel – yes, the staff _did_ look for it for a while,' he said. 'It's a shame it's gone missing, being a traditional finishing decoration for the tree. But truth be told, it was looking a bit jaded: it was very old, after all. For some reason, the material making up its gown and wings was becoming increasingly stained with soot from the hall fires, and we could never remove it. Instead of being pure white, it was almost black!'

Almost black? Then what had I seen in that small utility room? That angel – if I really _did_ see it, if it _really_ existed – had been mostly pure white.

The angel as it _used_ to be?

'What size was it, your angel?'

He looked askew at me once again, as if about to point out that I was still hitting him with question after question.

'Oh, quite large,' he answered instead, using his hands to give an idea of its height. 'Two feet maybe – at least!'

'And its colours? Apart from this pure whiteness?'

'Questions, questions!' he chuckled.

'Sorry; I'm just trying to picture it, that's all,' I lied.

'Yes, it was _mainly_ white; although it _was_ unusual in that it had black lace edgings. But they actually helped the whiteness be more obvious; it seemed to make it even more blindingly pure, by comparison.'

'Like...like a magpie, you mean?'

The connection between the two – if indeed there actually _was_ one – had only just dawned on me.

'Sorry?' He looked puzzled. 'Magpie?'

'Yes, yes; I mean the way the black feathers make the white ones appear even more intensely white.'

Richard nodded as he thought about this.

'Yes, I suppose a magpie _is_ a good example of that.'

'Or a chessboard – or a garden partly covered in snow, and partly uncovered.'

'Sorry?'

Poor Richard was staring at me bemusedly once more; which wasn't too surprising, as I'd been talking to myself rather than addressing him.

It was another connection to the white and black of the angel that had only just occurred to me.

(But _was_ it a connection? Or was it just me conjuring up these false similarities in my mind?)

If I was going to prove to Richard that he hadn't invited some crazy girl to stay with him in his home, I needed to prove that I really _was_ gradually unearthing some strange happenings within his castle.

The book; _A Guide for Young Wytches_ , or whatever it happened to be called now.

I needed to show him the book!

'I have something I need to show you!' I exclaimed, rising excitedly from my seated position by Richard's bed.

'There's no rush!' he laughed behind me as I quickly slipped through the door. 'I won't be going anywhere!'

*

# Chapter 13

For protection and the preparation for conflict, burn the wood and blooms of Gorse (or Furze).

A Guide for Young Wytches

As I passed by the very top of the Christmas tree, I was briefly fooled into thinking the angel had been found and restored to its rightful position once more.

But it wasn't the angel, of course.

It was the magpie.

Somehow, he'd got back inside the castle. And he'd taken to roosting up on the very top of the tree.

What is it they say about ravens watching you 'balefully'? Well this magpie managed to watch me with something more akin to a mischievous smirk, or maybe a challenging glower.

In his beak, he was holding onto a gloriously long, black silk scarf. A scarf that fluttered behind him as he rose up into the air.

I reached out, tried to snatch at the long, silky portion of scarf skimming by me.

I missed, my fingers closing around only empty air.

I was tempted to let the magpie fly off, assuming it would probably drop the scarf at some point anyway.

But that challenging look he'd given me; I'm sure he was more or less daring me to try and get it back off him.

I ran down the stairs, following the magpie as hurriedly as I could. It finally swooped low through yet another secret doorway I'd never noticed before.

This doorway wasn't hidden behind the tree. It was in plain view, only deliberately and deviously constructed to appear as just another part of a curving section of the wall.

Slipping through this new door, I found myself in a narrow corridor, one hidden inside the wall itself. It was undoubtedly one of the secret tunnels used by the staff.

It was lit only partially and dimly, with ancient gas mantle lamps placed every so often along one of the walls. The lamps gave the place an unusual sulphuric glow and smell.

Far ahead of me, there's a flash of white, hovering in the air: the magpie.

The tunnel curved slightly, so I had to run to keep the magpie in sight. Suddenly, the whites of the bird vanished. Its feathers of black, the fluttering scarf of black, were abruptly obvious in their place, as I was confronted by an open door leading out towards the blindingly white snow.

If the bird managed to get outside, I would have lost it. But I couldn't see any way of preventing it escaping me now.

I chased it out into the snow, the cold air striking me as forcefully as if I'd been plunged into an icy pool. My skin tingled, my eyes watered.

It seemed deathly quiet out here, the snow muffling any sound.

The magpie had thankfully come to rest on one of the snow-covered hedges, the blackness of his feathers, of the scarf, sharply outlined against it but for the still falling flakes.

Quietly, slowly, so as not to startle him, I began to tread through the thickly fallen snow towards the hedge. I needed to recover the scarf as quickly as I could: it was freezing out here, and I was relatively flimsily dressed.

Behind me, there was a dull clunk of heavy wood, a clang of metal.

I whirled around.

The door had slammed shut, leaving me out in the freezing snow.

*

# Chapter 14

Making your Own Wand: Part 2

You can use a windblown piece of wood the tree has naturally recently shed or, providing you ask permission from the tree in a respectful and intuitive way, cut the piece you believe you require.

A Guide for Young Wytches

I almost slipped a few times on the snow in my urgency to get back to the door.

I tried pulling it, pushing it, barging furiously into it; all to no avail.

I tried twisting the handle in a number of different ways; but still the door remained firmly, immovably shut.

I banged on the door, shouted for help. But the only sound apart from my frenzied cries was the soft fluttering of the falling snow.

What sort of help was I going to get from a staff I'd never seen?

I was already frozen. Wrapping my arms tightly around my body hardly made any difference.

I needed some other way to get back into some other part of the castle's keep, or surrounding walls.

Looking back out across the garden towards the soaring outer walls, I couldn't immediately see any of the attached buildings I was expecting to see there at their base. There didn't appear to be any doors or stairways leading into the towers either, although the thickly falling snow could well have been veiling these from me.

The walls solidly loomed over everything like endlessly rising cliffs.

I ran back out into the garden, all thoughts of chasing the magpie having flown with its own disappearance. The only sign that it had been on the hedge was the snagged and trailing scarf, which it had left behind, strewn across the whitened branches.

I carefully unsnagged the scarf from the prickly branches, stretching up as high as I could. I had to deftly flip the higher parts of the scarf clear of the highest sections of the hedge.

It wasn't much, but the scarf might at least prevent the cold from penetrating down through the loose collar of my blouse.

As I quickly wound the scarf around my neck, I almost instantly felt warmer.

But maybe that shouldn't have been such a surprise; because glancing about me, I realised I was inside a steamingly hot room.

*

# Chapter 15

From other rooms, there are sounds of a raucous, drunken party.

The singing, the cries of joy, all in German. Mixed in with a piano being played. Even trumpets, or some other wind instruments.

There's also the crackling of recorded music being played somewhere too.

In the corridor outside, uniformed officers are slowly dancing with or at least holding tightly onto girls and women dressed in elegant evening gowns.

The dimly lit, damp and claustrophobically small rooms are at odds with this party atmosphere, as is the stench; the sickly sharp tang of sweat, urine, even faeces.

I'm hot because I'm dressed once again in the warm winter coat I originally arrived here in. The two men with me are also dressed in heavy coats, ready to go outside.

If there's a lift, we're not risking take it. Probably because the generator supplying the electricity is only working intermittently. The little light we have is flickering every now and again. The music on the phonograph slews to a brief halt, only to almost immediately start up again.

We take a mix of steep stairwells, angled ramps, even the odd steel ladder.

The higher we rise up through the surrounding earth, the more you can hear the steady crumps of the explosions regularly taking place on the surface. Here the walls are damper than ever, too, the water streaming down the sides. Powdered earth and concrete drops around us endlessly, all of it disturbed by the relentless bombardment of the Russian guns.

Even though it's more dangerous outside the bunker rather than living safely under what feels like mile-thick concrete, I breathe in the relatively fresh air with the relief of someone who's been on the verge of drowning.

The abrupt change in temperature almost instantly takes that breath away; despite my overcoat and scarf, it's remarkably cold out here. Although I knew it was around midnight, I'm still taken by surprise by the darkness; my body lacks its otherwise natural sense of the passing of time, after living without daylight down in the bunker.

Life in the bunker soon strips you of a number of things, not least your sense of being human, of humanity itself.

Added to that, it reveals that your ideas of security, of hope and reassurance that all will end up well in the world, are all figments of your imagination. Everyone in there presumes the Russians will soon overrun this area, will soon discover them: naturally, few of them have been included in drawing up the wildly dangerous plans that could ensure their rescue.

My worst experiences were with those whom I should have had a natural bond, the other witches and warlocks who had been brought in to accomplish their own, more relatively minor tasks.

I disagreed with what they were attempting. Being English, however, and therefore already treated with suspicion, I dared not make my repugnance at their means known to them.

It wouldn't have swayed them anyway

Poor Magda Goebbels: she believes she's poisoning those wonderful children of hers to save them from the Russians – yet she's only consigning them to a far worse fate.

She blissfully believes her poor children now lie permanently asleep in their beds: yet their new role is only just beginning.

*

# Chapter 16

The Ogham Script are symbols that can be carved onto your wands and talismans, or used in charms, consisting of twenty-five simple strokes branching off a central line.

A Guide for Young Wytches

As soon as I came out of my flashback, I realised I was freezing, far colder than the young, English witch had been.

At least she had an overcoat.

As for me, the cold was cutting through my blouse and undergarments. (Thankfully, in this case, the castle's interior isn't heated enough to allow anyone to walk around in anything but reasonably warm clothing.)

Still, I desperately needed to get back inside the building as soon as I could. Otherwise, I would freeze to death out in the snow-swept garden.

Glancing out over the garden once more, but this time focusing on the garden itself rather than the surrounding walls, it dawned on me that from this level the purely white sections, along with the mix of weirdly dark areas untouched by snow, made it look all the more like some sort of game board. The geometrically cut hedges, the angularly set-out borders, all added to this effect.

A few of the snowflakes were aimlessly drifting towards the darker areas. Yet as soon as they entered these areas, the flakes vanished – as if melting.

I wonder...

I quickly made my way over to one of the darker areas. As I'd suspected, it was warmer here.

Bending at my knees, I reached down to feel the ground.

No, the warmth wasn't coming from underneath the earth. And the ground wasn't wet, as I'd expected, believing that the snow must be melting as soon as it touched the grass or paving stones.

The heat came from all around me, as if from the air itself. Yet the heat wasn't strong enough to melt the swirling snow as it fell nearby.

Even so, it was a heat that would stop me from freezing.

I looked back towards the castle's keep, the central block where the castle's main living quarters seemed to be situated. Certainly, it was where Richard's room was, as well as my own room.

Although the keep towered over me, it was in no way near as imposing or threatening as the looming outside walls. It possessed only a few levels and, rather than being solid, sheer walls, they were almost gracefully beautiful in the way they'd been regularly pierced with large and ornately framed windows.

As I looked up to where I presumed my own room might possibly be, out of the corner of my eye I caught a movement in the garden. Alongside me, and yet far off. I turned to see what it might be.

It was a dark figure, almost hidden in the darkness of the snow-free area she was forlornly walking in. Pausing, she glanced up towards the keep, seemingly looking sadly towards the windows of my own room.

As if suddenly aware that I was watching her, she turned my way.

She saw me, smiled: then vanished.

It was the witch: the English witch of my flashbacks.

*

# Chapter 17

Making your Own Wand: Part 3

It is easiest to remove the bark from the wood while it is still fresh.

Focus on your expectations of the wand.

A Guide for Young Wytches

I ran over towards the dark square of garden I'd just seen the witch standing in.

Yes, I was fearful, wary; yet I was also curious.

I needed to check that I hadn't imagined seeing her.

When I got to the square, I was disappointed; the only footsteps in the surrounding snow leading to the square were my own.

There was no sign at all that the English witch had actually been here.

Had it been nothing more than a mirage after all?

An image conjured up by my imagination within the swirling patterns of snow?

No, I don't think it had: she had seemed all too real to me.

Yet if it really had been her, she hadn't aged at all since the end of the war. She still looked to be in her late teens.

Still beautiful.

Why would an English witch have been helping the Germans?

Because the Germans had promised her and the other witches that their religion would have been accepted by the newly restored empire, perhaps?

So what had happened to the plan to rescue everyone still trapped within Berlin's bunker?

It had failed, obviously. Berlin had fallen. Those in the bunker who hadn't killed themselves or managed to escape became prisoners of the Russians.

Whatever the English witch was supposed to do – and perhaps she was supposed to do it here, too, in this castle – she had thankfully failed.

*

I still needed a way back into the castle's keep.

I couldn't see anyone at the windows.

Perhaps if I went around to the side of the keep where Richard had his room, I might be able to attract his attention by throwing snowballs at his window.

There certainly didn't seem to be much hope of coming across the castle's staff out here, considering I'd never seen anything of them while being _inside_ the living quarters!

The problem was that I'd have to step outside of the relative warmth of the garden, step back into the overwhelming cold of the snow-covered courtyard.

I wouldn't make it around to another side of the keep, let alone stay alive long enough to wait for Richard to respond to my snowballs striking his window; would he even be able to get out of bed to see who was throwing the balls towards his room?

I looked about, seeking another solution to my problem.

In the dark square I was standing in, there were two plinths, topped by stone vases containing shrubs carefully cut into regular cubes. I headed towards them, noticing that there was also a slab of stone running between them. It looked like the top of a small flight of steps leading to a slightly lower part of the garden.

It wasn't a small flight of stairs, however – it was a flight sharply descending into a brick-sided depression, ending with a door.

'Daniella!'

Although muted somewhat by the falling snow, the deadening effect of the thick layers that had already fallen, the angry cry still made me stop, made me turn around to see who was calling me.

Another dark, lean shape was making its way through the whirling flakes – a ghostly negative – this time directly making its way towards me. As the dark wraith drew ever closer, I picked out the details informing me that it was Lisa.

'Daniella: I need to talk to you! You're really _not_ who you say you are at all, are you?'

*

# Chapter 18

To bless and protect the mother and a newly born babe, burn the needles of a Silver Fir, which is also known as the Birth Tree.

A Guide for Young Wytches

Unlike me, Lisa was dressed in a thick coat.

Even so, as soon as she'd attracted my attention, she thankfully turned back towards the keep. She obviously expected me to follow.

'You could die out here in this cold dressed like that!' she stormed at me irritably, without bothering to look back and check that I was following. 'It's lucky for you I saw you from your bedroom window when I came looking for you!'

I instinctively glanced up towards the windows of my room, thankful that I'd been placed in a room overlooking this weird garden.

'Why do you need me?' I asked her, echoing her irritation. 'What do you mean, I'm not who I say I am?'

'You said you stayed at the Imperia Hotel in Corfu?'

As she said this, she handed me a small tablet computer, clicking the screen on as she did so.

It immediately opened up on a photograph of the Imperia Hotel, but one showing how it must have looked at least half a century ago. It was a picture possessing that strange sense of another era, with the style of cars parked outside, the faded colours.

'Yes, that's right,' I said in reply to Lisa, realising it would be unwise to point out that I'd actually told Richard this rather than her.

He'd obviously told her the details: had she demanded to know, or had it just come up naturally in conversation?

'This is an old photo, naturally,' I added. 'But yes, that's the place I stayed at.'

As I said this, I looked at the various tabs on the screen to see if there was any way of accessing a more up-to-date picture on the website. However, it wasn't the internet – wireless connections must be few and far between this high up in the mountains – but a saved picture.

'Yes, it _is_ an old picture, isn't it?' Lisa snapped back surprisingly scornfully. 'But that's because it was pulled down in the nineteen fifties!'

*

# Chapter 19

You create a personality as a protection; but, like any protection, it can become your own imprisonment.

A Guide for Young Wytches

Even though I was relieved to be back at last in the warmth of the castle, I stopped on the threshold of the open door, half in, half out.

I was shocked by Lisa's ridiculous claim that the Imperia Hotel no longer existed.

'Impossible!' I snorted in disbelief. 'I was staying there just a few weeks ago! Or at least, staying at a hotel that looked remarkably like this one!'

'I agree with your term "impossible"; though perhaps not in the way _you_ mean it!'

'Perhaps when they say it was pulled down, they mean everything but the facade; you know – the way they build behind the old frontage?'

'I don't think much of that went on in the fifties, do you?'

I couldn't see her face as we were now striding down the servants' tunnels running behind the walls, Lisa furiously storming on ahead of me.

'A copy then; to recapture some of the glamour of that time?'

'So, what was it like – staying in this modern hotel built to recapture the glamour of a previous age?'

Her comment was laden with scorn.

'Well...like any hotel, I suppose. What can you say? Nice rooms, attentive staff; that kind of thing.'

I had to bite my lip to stop myself from sarcastically adding, 'Unlike your own invisible staff.'

I added instead, 'Maybe this site you've got the photograph from has made a mistake; mixed it up with some other Imperia Hotel that was knocked down.'

'I checked; that was the only one on the island.'

'A _hacked_ site: someone could have changed the details!'

'Oh of course! Silly me! Hackers are _renowned_ for breaking into _historical_ sites, aren't they?'

She'd got a point; not that I was going to admit it.

I was struggling to explain how I had managed to stay in a hotel that had supposedly been demolished.

I knew it _had_ to be possible because I _knew_ I'd stayed there!

My entire holiday couldn't just have been a figment of my imagination!

_Unless_ – the English witch had something to do with all this!

How hard would hacking into an island's historical site be for her? For a witch who hadn't aged since the last world war?

And she would do all this because...?

Answering _that_ really beat me!

As for blurting out that 'An English witch is responsible for all this!' – well, it was hardly an explanation I could use to persuade Lisa that I was telling the truth, was it?

I needed proof: something that would prove odd things were happening around the castle.

The book!

The _Guide for Young Wytches_.

It dawned on me that the only chance I had of persuading Lisa I was telling the truth was to present her with the book on witchcraft.

It probably wouldn't change its title while she held it, of course; but the increasingly complicated spells that had been gradually appearing within it might begin to make her appreciate that not everything happening in the castle was as it first seemed.

'Look, I can prove _something_ odd is happening to me, to this castle,' I declared adamantly as we stepped out into the castle's hallway through the disguised doorway. 'I have a book, a really _unusual_ book...'

*

Of course, Lisa didn't see how a book – 'Even the _world's_ most unusual book' – could ever prove that I was telling the truth about my holiday in Corfu.

Even so, I'd managed to cajole her into heading up to my room with me.

On the way, I'd asked about the strange way the garden had warmer areas than others. She'd frowned irately as I'd asked the question, no doubt regarding it as an attempt to draw her attention away from all the questions she'd been hoping to throw at me.

'It's what they call a localised climate, I believe: the high walls of the castle funnel the winds into odd patterns. Even more so than you'd expect to find around high rise blocks in the cities.'

I couldn't see that it was an adequate explanation, but going by Lisa's sour expression, it was the best I was going to get out of her.

As soon as we entered my room, I dashed over towards the drawer contain the book. I dragged out the book from underneath my clothes, turned, and handed it straight to Lisa.

She took it, stared at it with a wide-eyed gawp that could have been either horror or shock.

It was, it turned out, bafflement.

'A _children's_ book?'

Looking up from the book in her hands, she eyed me more suspiciously than ever. She was trembling with anger.

Now I was the one gawping at the book she held.

The title had changed once more.

It had changed back to _A Guide for Young Wytches_.

*

# Chapter 20

Making your Own Wand: Part 4

You might prefer to leave some of the bark on.

Add the symbols now, too, while the wood is soft.

A Guide for Young Wytches

'I...I don't understand!' I stammered nervously, staring in disbelief at the book Lisa held. 'I mean, it was a book...a book about...'

'About ridiculous excuses, maybe?'

Lisa threw the book down upon the top of the set of drawers alongside her.

'What _I_ don't understand,' she continued furiously, even as she whirled on the balls of her feet to leave, 'is how you ever thought a childish book on witches was somehow going to make me believe you somehow managed to stay in a hotel pulled down half a century ago!'

She kept up the insults, without once bothering to look back at me, as she angrily strode towards the door.

'I've no idea _what_ your game is young lady; but as soon as there's a break in the weather, I want you out of here, got that?'

It was only as she finally reached the door and irately wrenched it open that she at last turned to glance back at me.

'I'm not sure how you were intending worming your evil little way into Richard's life,' she snarled, glowering at me as if I had somehow threatened, perhaps even endangered, both her and Richard's life, 'but you should know he's _not_ for you! He's _not_ what you think he is: do you understand _that_?'

The door slammed behind her.

Did she think I was only here to charm Richard out of money?

Did she see me as some sort of awful gold digger?

Or...was it that she saw me as a rival?

A rival for Richard's love?

_No_!

Surely not!

_That_ would be absolutely crazy!

She was old enough to be...well, his _grandmother_ , wasn't she?

At least, the thought made me chuckle.

I picked up the book, wondering how or why it had changed back to its original form, its original title.

As soon as I touched the book, I was outside of the castle once more. Outside the towers holding the drawbridge, the portcullis.

Driving up the road towards the looming castle through the snow yet again.

*

The car I'm in is in a terrible state: it's struggling to wind its way up along the rising, slightly curving road that leads to the castle's imposing entrance.

A uniformed man is in the front of the car, driving. I'm in the back; the English witch, arriving at the castle for the very first time.

The car's motor is struggling badly. The wheels screech in protest, like it's suffering from a bent or at least damaged axle, or maybe dented hubcaps.

From behind us, however, there's an even heavier rattling of metal. A thundering rumble of the ground too, which makes the road tremble. It also shakes our own car, such that it rattles tinnily, ominously.

Turning around in my seat, staring out of the muddied back window, I see an absolutely massive tank following on behind us.

A Tiger Two; a King Tiger.

The English witch knows which kind of tank it is.

Gigantic, with angled sides; a truly huge gun.

More amazingly, it seems to emanate a darkness that hangs around it like a pall of smoke. Yet it isn't smoke, it isn't the tank's exhaust, or burning oil: it really is an _actual_ darkness that it's suffused with.

The darkness of cruelty: of a merciless entity.

The tank breathes, heavily, like it's alive.

I can sense that life, that emanation of evil. Even here, seated in the car.

I fear it. Fear it more than anything I've ever feared in my life.

And I don't just mean _I_ fear it: I mean the English witch – _she_ fears it!

I turn around in the seat once more.

We've reached the twin towers containing the portcullis and drawbridge. They're constructed on the edge of an extensive gap stretching between the road's end and the castle itself.

The portcullis shudders and clanks as it begins to rise. Only just a foot or so beyond it, the drawbridge still looms before us like a solid wall of wood, before it too begins to tremble and quake, gradually dropping away from us to fall neatly into place across the gap.

The car trundles across the bridge's heavy wooden boards.

And whatever fear I'd felt before seems like nothing compared to the horror, the dread, that suddenly floods through me.

Is this wise, entering the Castle of Demons?

*

# Chapter 21

Wands of Hazel are for healing and to gain knowledge, wisdom and poetic inspiration.

A Guide for Young Wytches

Even the English witch is scared of this castle?

Why?

Is she, or the demons she thinks lives in this castle, the ones responsible for Richard's illness.

Just as fear flooded through the English witch, all these thoughts and more rushed through me as I ran towards Richard's room.

I needed to ask him why his castle might be thought of, or perhaps is even _called_ , the Castle of Demons.

Perhaps his parent's car crash hadn't been an accident.

Perhaps they had fallen victim either to the witch's spells, or to the castle's demonic occupants.

I rushed into his bedroom without bothering to knock. But his bed was empty, the covers thrown back as if he had just about leapt out of bed.

Not that he had the energy, of course, to leap out of bed. Last time I'd seen him, he had looked so ill I doubted he'd be capable of even slowly struggling out of bed.

Either he'd had the most strikingly quick recovery the medical world has ever seen or – what was far more likely – he'd been helped to get out of bed and leave his room.

Abruptly, there was an angry, almost violent fluttering of snow at the window.

But it wasn't the snow: it was the magpie.

The magpie who always seems to turn up just before something incredibly weird happens.

As he flew away, out into the still angrily swirling snow, I rushed over towards the window in the hope of watching where he was flying off to. All I could see at first was the ghostly whirls of the heavily falling snow. Then, at last, I caught a brief glimpse of the darker feathers of the magpie.

He was heading through the snow towards the looming outer walls. Once he'd drawn nearer to them, he began to soar upwards, flying closely alongside the precipitously ascending stonework.

To follow his soaring course, I had to lean closer against the glass of the windows: yet even then I couldn't entirely track his route, for he soon vanished from my area of view.

The high walls dominated everything around them.

Even through the snow, they appeared massive, imposingly solid and impregnable. Amazingly, they appeared even more unbreachable than when you saw them from the outside, when first approaching the castle.

If I hadn't known for sure that it wasn't the case, I could have sworn I _was_ viewing a castle from outside its formidable walls. Anyone attacking such high-soaring yet totally bare walls would find it a nigh impossible task to climb them.

It seemed an odd way to construct a castle; almost as if it had been turned inside out, like an item of clothing.

Wasn't a castle's keep supposed to loom over its outside walls, rather than the other way round?

That way, the keep's defenders could also fire on anyone attacking the castle. While if the outer walls fell, those in the keep still retained the advantage of being able to fire down on the besiegers.

Then there was the drawbridge: it hadn't dropped down towards either me or the English witch as we'd approached the castle – it had dropped _away_ from us. It had bridged the gap between the huge slabs of rocks by falling _towards_ the castle.

As if – as if it was something _within_ the castle that had to be prevented from getting _out_.

A flutter of darkness against the snow caught my eye.

It was the magpie: he'd returned, or at least come back into my view, swooping down towards the snow covered courtyard. This time, I watched him drop through the falling snow, dropping lower.

He curled gracefully over the ground – leading my gaze (perhaps deliberately) towards a square of darkness centred within the otherwise pure white sheet of snow-strewn yard.

It was like one of the dark squares I'd seen – and walked in – within the garden.

There was a dark figure standing within the dark square's own centre.

The English witch.

I felt sure it had to be her again, even though I couldn't clearly make her out through the distorting effect of the spinning snow.

Then the head of the dark figure tipped back, the face, the malicious grin, suddenly directed my way.

It wasn't the English witch.

It was Richard.

*

# Chapter 22

If you require magical protection, swiftly draw a circle around yourself with a Hazel branch.

A Guide for Young Wytches

I jumped away from the window so quickly that I almost fell back across the floor.

I reached out for something to hold onto to stop myself from falling.

My hand gratefully grasped at and finally gripped the edge of a set of drawers placed flush to the wall.

As soon as I steadied myself and managed to get over my shock, I strode back towards the window. I glanced out once more across the snow covered courtyard.

And yes, it _was_ covered in snow. Completely covered in snow.

There was no longer any black square of snow-free stone there. No longer any forebodingly dark Richard, grinning at me with what had seemed evil intent.

Had I imagined it?

Had it all been something similar to the flashbacks I'd been experiencing?

But even if it had been a flashback, that would still mean Richard wasn't the innocent character I'd taken him to be.

Unless...unless it hadn't been _Richard_ I'd seen out there, but an ancestor of his.

I glanced urgently about Richard's bedroom. Was there something in here I could hold that might give me yet another flashback? This time, however, one that would give me an idea about his own history or experiences?

My eyes lingered over his bed: his recently slept in bed.

Could there be anything more likely to give you contact with a person other than their bed?

The place where most people spent a great deal of their lives; the place where the subconscious reined supreme, dictating dreams, creating a whole new world of the imagination.

And with Richard being ill, he'd spent even more of his time in that bed than most other people would have.

Striding back towards the bed, I reached out towards the chaotically rippled sheets.

There was a still a slight warmth there, still a remainder of his presence.

*

# Chapter 23

I can see Richard.

Richard as he had been as the darkly dressed, maliciously grinning man I'd seen out in the courtyard.

Unlike in the other flashbacks, however, I don't feel that I _am_ him: I'm not experiencing all this from _his_ point of view.

He's too _dark_ for me to achieve that.

Dark as in _absorbing_ all light; all _goodness_.

Like the dark areas in the checkerboard-like garden. I realise now that those areas are similar to what I'm seeing now: they're an absorption of all that is good from around them. Or, at best, an _intrusion_ into a world where they're no longer supposed to exist.

So when I'd stepped into those areas, why hadn't I sensed that soaking up of all that was good, all that was just?

Why had I experienced instead just a sense of heat?

Richard – or his ancestor, or whoever he really is – is deep in thought, it seems. His head is bowed slightly, his breathing hard. He's not facing my way: he's looking out beneath a furrowed brow, intently observing something that lies directly ahead of him.

He's slightly leaning forward, slightly resting on the hilt of a large sword whose blade tip is dug into the earth by his feet. His black clothes are a mix of studded leather armour, cloak, and high boots.

The snow is falling heavily. Strangely, Richard eyes it with an irritated grimace.

I sense that he sees it as a danger, a curb on his power – an unwanted intrusion into his plans, a possible frustration to the achieving of his goals.

And yet the snow obviously hasn't been falling long, has probably only just started falling: the ground is clear of anything but the first smattering of a thin layer of flakes.

The ground beneath my feet trembles. There's the sound of thunder from far off behind me, yet growing louder remarkably swiftly.

Richard whirls around; he starts, his eyes seemingly locking on me, even though I'm not there. Even though he can't possibly see me.

Even so, he launches himself at me, raising his sword to strike me down.

I leap aside, my movement surprisingly fast, taking me by surprise.

As I land and roll across the ground, glancing back towards Richard, it dawns on me that far from being alone we're in the middle of a vast battle. It's not a normal battle, though: it's one in which everyone moves with surprising agility, at incredible speed.

The thunder I'd heard was a massed onslaught of heavily armoured, mounted knights. Lances down, they've charged directly into the thick ranks of darkly armoured foot soldiers. These darker knights are dressed in many ways similarly to Richard, only with complete sets of viciously barbed armour.

Richard isn't bothering with me, if indeed it really had been me he'd leapt at in the first place.

He's throwing himself amongst the knights, whirling above their heads in gravity-defying gymnastic rolls.

His sword whirls, slices, stabs.

He uses a hand now and again as if attempting to cast out a spell, yet whatever he's attempting to utilise is feeble in its effects. At best, he knocks a rider from his horse, yet more generally he only manages to cause a weapon to fly from someone's grip.

Despite everyone's remarkable speed and agility, Richard's skills are undoubtedly the most prodigious. Whereas many of his equally darkly-clad men are falling around him, he's prevailing against what would be unfairly overwhelming odds for anyone else.

Heads are sliced from necks, arms from shoulders, legs from hips.

Bodies crumple to the ground, sometimes both mount and rider, tendons hacked, waists spouting blood.

There are thousands of fiercely battling knights, their otherwise remarkable actions cramped by the lack of space to fight in. We're situated on the peak of a mountain, itself one of many surrounding mountains.

I recognise the scene. It's the mountain that the castle will later be constructed upon. The mountain before the builders gouged out the stone for the castle's walls from the peak itself, creating the deep, dry moat as they did so.

The battling knights fortunately flow through me, unaware of my presence. I can wander around in safety, despite the ferocity of the merciless combatants.

There's a strange darkness to each of the black-clad knights, a deep, self-creating blackness that the English witch had also sensed as she'd stared out at the tank following on behind her car.

There's a heat rising from them too, a heat similar to that which I'd experienced when standing in one of the garden's dark, snow free squares.

These dark knights could be capable of great evil, I feel: and they would have the power to spread that evil too, if it wasn't for the thickly falling snow.

The snow is a spell, or at least part of a spell: a spell controlling or at least lessening the strength and potency of demonic powers.

How do I know that?

I don't know.

It's a spell, too, that's helping the knights fight the demons; giving them courage, resourcefulness. There's another spell as well, granting them the agility and speed they need to have any hope of defeating these dark creatures.

'Witch!'

The yell rings out from the midst of the battle.

It comes from Richard, standing on the back of a horse whose rider he's just effortlessly decapitated.

And, once again, he bizarrely seems to be staring directly at me.

I spin around to see whom his anger's directed at. I can't see anybody amongst the frantically warring knights who could be thought of as a witch.

As I turn back to look at him, he points towards me accusingly.

' _You're_ the cause of my weakness!'

Rushing across the backs of a number of other horses, casually knifing or slicing with his sword at the mounted knights, he leaps towards me. His sword is raised in readiness to strike.

Even though I'm tempted to ignore him – a part of me still clinging to the belief that he couldn't possibly see me, that there's no way he could harm me – I jump out of the way anyway.

At the last point of his leap, he's distracted and slightly unbalanced by an attacking knight. Thanks to this, I avoid the worst of his slicing sword. It merely skims my blouse – and yet the blade takes out a slice of material.

He really can _see_ me!

He really can _hurt_ me!

He moves incredibly quickly.

He gabs the back of my blouse even as I try and roll completely clear of him. He jerks me back towards him.

With a violent twist of his arm, he throws me to the ground.

Standing astride me, he raises his sword. He brings it swinging down towards my head with a triumphant cry of 'Die witch!'

I cover my face with my arms – as if that would spare me from his swiftly descending blade.

Yet _something_ stays his strike against me.

There's a flash of the brightest colours. An explosion of light I can see even through my shielding arms.

Colours that rapidly merge, becoming purest white, the white of the swirling snow.

Daring to lower my arms, I see that Richard has been frozen in mid strike.

Yet his eyes are ablaze, with hatred, with fury.

He's struggling to regain control of his body, to bring the sword finally crashing down, to split my skull.

The snow whirls through his dark body, the way snow whirls through the darkness of night.

As if he's no longer wholly there. As if he's becoming a pure darkness.

The flakes flutter, rush around in circles, in spirals.

There are more and more of the flakes, the snowfall growing in intensity. In its solidity.

And suddenly, Richard's no longer there; it's just the rapidly falling, chaotically swirling snow.

A soft whiteness hovering above me rather than Richard's hard darkness.

With the heavy fall of snow, there also comes the fall of silence.

The battle is over.

The knights are exhausted.

But they have won.

Every demon has vanished.

*

# Chapter 24

Planting a Rose Within Your Mind: Part 1 of 7

Just as you take a plant's snipped branch and push it into a nutritious soil, you need a receptive mind in which your creation can be nurtured. Prepare your grounding well, by observing closely the rose you most admire.

A Guide for Young Wytches

I blinked; and I was back in Richard's room.

But I was no longer by his bed.

I was on the floor. Lying on my back.

I nervously checked my blouse. A slice of material was missing from it.

The backs of my arms were filthy. As if I'd been rolling around in a dirty field.

It had all _really_ happened.

It hadn't just been a flashback: something existing purely in my mind.

The castle had been built around that battle site; not to keep besiegers out – but to keep Richard and his demons _inside_!

*

The endlessly falling snow was obviously some kind of spell or charm that helped keep the demons prisoners here.

But it could well be that that spell was wearing off – hence the resurgent patches of darkness that were reforming within the garden.

The dark, demonic world was gradually coming back to life once more.

But why wasn't anyone here to stop it? Why had they built this huge castle to restrain the demons, only to abandon it?

Perhaps, at one time, those looming, forbidding outer walls had been manned by a vast army. Ready at all times to fight any resurgent demons.

A form of Knights Templar, a special order charged with constraining the dark forces.

Maybe, like the Knights Templar, they were also disbanded, no longer seen as necessary.

Perhaps, after a few hundred years of peace and little or no action, or signs of demonic presence, no one in authority believed anymore that there had ever really been an army of darkness, a horde that had had to be defeated in a ferocious battle.

Does Richard only _seem_ ill because his powers are still being sapped by the falling snow?

Will he recover as more of the darkness reconquers more and more of the garden?

And what of Lisa? Where does she fit into all this?

Is she a demon too?

And the castle's staff?

The servants and maids I've never seen?

Are they a _demonic_ staff?

That would explain why I've never seen any of them at work.

No matter what the answers are, no matter what the truth, I know one thing for certain – I have to get out of this castle!

*

# Chapter 25

Wands of Hawthorn (May Tree or White Thorn) cleanse the heart of negativity and can be used for psychic protection, or stimulating love, forgiveness, good fortune and spiritual growth.

A Guide for Young Wytches

I ran from the room, hoping for once that I wouldn't come across anybody working in the hallways.

Glancing towards the top of the tree, I was expecting the magpie to be perched there, cawing out a warning that I was preparing to flee.

It was still bare, however, apart from the sky blue wassail ball, sparkling as it twirled in the lightest of draughts. Its twinkling light flickered across my face as I rushed along the landing, down the stairs.

How do I get out of the castle?

A castle specifically built to imprison demons?

Hopefully, it's the spells and charms that hold them captive, rather than just the physically constructed building.

If that's the case, then there may well be an exit built into the outer walls for the human knights to easily walk from the castle.

Ah, but how do I get _inside_ the outer walls?

If I'm right about the castle being built to hold the demons captive, the walls would have been designed to withstand even the most fearsome onslaught from _inside_.

And then, even if I do manage to get outside, how do I get down the mountainside, back to the village lying far below in the valley?

I headed for my room.

Not for my suitcase, which I knew would be too heavy to carry, but for a warm change of clothing. I had no idea how long I'd be out in the snow. It may be quite a walk from the castle before my cellphone came into signal range, allowing me to call a car to come and collect me.

Despite my urgency, as soon as I entered my room I instinctively realised something was different.

Instead of being a source of light, there was an unusual darkness by the window; a grey, dimming of the room that I would have expected only if it heralded an oncoming storm, rather than the blindingly white snow that still tapped hurriedly against the glass.

That greyness was darkening, much as a fall of snow becomes whiter the thicker it falls. The darkness was spreading too, encroaching into the room in swirls of blackened air.

I would have ran; but amongst the darkness, the angel – the angel that should be gracing the top of the Christmas tree – glowed a brilliant white, hovering in the air, deep within the serpentine swirling of blackness.

*

The angel's wings were fluttering slightly, as if it were alive; yet its face remained placid, still, doll-like in its expression of peacefulness.

Striding quickly across the room, I reached out and up, intending to grasp the angel – but with an abruptly more aggressive fluttering of the wings, the angel was suddenly the magpie, cawing out in irritation.

It flew effortlessly out of my grasp, beyond my reach.

The darkness was all around me now.

I'd not only stepped closer to it, in my fruitless efforts to retrieve the angel, but it had also swiftly enveloped me, reaching out in its own, more successful way.

'Leaving so soon?'

The voice came from the darkness – no, it _was_ the darkness, speaking to me.

A woman's voice; no, a girl's, a teenage girl's.

I felt something, someone, drift behind me. What felt like a softly comforting but shiveringly cold hand ran across my shoulders, the back of my neck.

'You have to be careful,' the voice warned. 'In this castle, those you believe are evil are the ones in the right; while those you think of as good mean you harm.'

Patches of the darkness came together, solidified, swiftly transforming into the shadows required to define any form. And from those shadows the young witch came to be, sitting casually on the edge of my bed.

The English witch.

'So,' I said, trying to control the tremor of fear within my own voice, 'you're saying that you're really a _good_ witch?'

Was she aware that I'd seen her in my flashbacks? That, according to what I'd seen of her so far, there appeared to be very little that was 'good' about her?

'Oh, you haven't seen _everything_ yet!' she replied lightly, dismissively. 'I'd _hate_ you to go taking the wrong impression of me.'

She rose up from the bed.

Her dress, her hat, were all black, yet had only a passing resemblance to what we might think of as witch's clothes. They were far more elegant, a chiefly timeless style of dressing, with perhaps faint hints of the medieval.

'If you saw only the darkness of a magpie, wouldn't you believe you were seeing a raven? If it had visited and left behind, however, only a clutch of its _white_ feathers, wouldn't you flatter yourself that you had been graced with the presence of a dove – maybe even an angel? In our histories, we all have patches of darkness: yet should it be only those areas that truly define us?'

As she talked, she silently whisked past me, heading towards the window.

She pointed out through the snow-covered glass, her indicating finger causing the veiling snow to melt and shift aside, allowing a perfect view of the darkly chequered garden.

'The steps you discovered in the garden,' she said, drawing my attention to the magpie sitting by the plinths flanking the stone staircase, ' _they're_ your only way out of here.'

Once again, her voice came merely from the darkness beside me, a darkness that was thankfully swiftly dissolving, returning my room to normal.

*

# Chapter 26

Meditation, forewarnings and foreknowledge are all greatly enhanced by holding a wand of Rowan (Wychwood, or Sorb Apple).

A Guide for Young Wytches

The snow-covered areas of the garden seemed less cold than they had before, when I'd last been out here.

I'm wearing warmer clothing now, of course.

I think – I hope – that's the only reason the garden feels a little warmer.

When I'd taken my clothes out of the drawer, I'd also unintentionally uncovered the book I'd found earlier.

No longer _A Guide for Young Wytches_ , it had changed once more; now it had become _A Guide for A Wytch_

I'd left the book in the drawer. I had no use for it. It would have only been something useless I had to carry.

I had brought along with me, however, the sparkling blue wassail ball I'd used earlier to light my way around the spare room hidden behind the Christmas tree.

I hadn't had to retrieve it from the tree: when the English witch had vanished, I'd noticed that she'd left the glistening ball behind on my bed.

The magpie was still perched on the plinth when I arrived at the top of the steps. It eyed me curiously, almost with a smile, if that were really possible.

The door at the bottom of the steps was closed. Fortunately, however, it wasn't locked.

Inside, it was colder than ever, despite the steps being in one of the warmer, dark areas of the garden.

The wassail ball threw out its meagre light; not enough to light up the entire room, but enough to dimly light my way through it.

The room was a crudely-walled, domed structure: perhaps originally built as a form of cold storage.

It wasn't very large, such that I feared I might have been led into a trap until I saw yet another flight of steps, these leading even lower into the rock that the castle has been built upon.

These steps were far more modern than the stone ones that had first led me down here. They formed an iron, spiral staircase, descending through a narrow chimney carved into the rock.

The steps clanged dully as I made my way down them, yet after a while I noted a change in the tone. The stairway beneath me rang out in a way that implied it was no longer constrained by the rock chimney but, rather, continued its descent through a more open space.

When my head cleared what turned out to be the last of the carved-out chimney, I sensed rather than saw that I had entered a vast cavern, through which the spiral staircase continued to wind its way down towards the ground.

I reached out into the surrounding dark space, trying to cast the dim light emanating from the wassail ball as far as I possibly could. The blue light was dully reflected back here and there, though from exactly what I couldn't be sure. Yet the reflections stretched far back; the cavern was huge.

As I descended the stairs, drawing closer to their base, it gradually dawned on me that the dull reflections emanated from slightly angled plates of dusty glass. When l was lower still, I recognised that the glass panes were the windshields of armoured troop carriers – maybe at least a hundred of them, stretching as far back as I could see.

Lower still, I began to pick out the shapes of other vehicles, again numbered in tens if not hundreds. These were darker, duller shapes; tanks. Row upon row of ominously shaped tanks.

As I at last neared the base of the spiral staircase, I involuntarily shivered. I no longer felt that I was alone, even though I hadn't heard or seen any signs of anyone else.

Abruptly, I also felt afraid: _very_ afraid.

Then I heard it – the steady rhythm of heavy breathing.

The heavy breathing of a beast patiently waiting to be awoken.

I raised the wassail ball, praying its light would reveal that there was nothing there to be frightened of. That I was letting my stupid imagination conjure up all sorts of illusionary dangers.

The blue light vaguely illuminated a nearby tank.

But it wasn't just any tank.

It was the huge tank that had accompanied the English witch when she had first arrived at the castle.

The tank that even she had feared.

*

# Chapter 27

Although each Ogham Stick should be created from the relevant tree, they may all be made of Rowan (Wychwood, or Sorb Apple), marking each with the 20 Ogham symbols, and interpreting these in light of the question asked.

A Guide for Young Wytches

Brooding.

Sleeping.

Alive.

They're not usually the kind of terms you'd use to describe a tank: something made by man, something of metal, rubber, oil.

Yet everything about this massive, looming beast screamed at me that it _was_ a creature, not a mechanical object.

It was at least twice the size of the tanks surrounding it. Its steeply angled sides were more like walls rather than sections of a vehicle.

It seemed to be merely asleep, a slumbering giant compared to the small wreck of a car lying alongside it.

I recognised the car. It was the one the English witch had been seated in.

Which meant, I reasoned, that this darkly dominating tank was indeed the one that had accompanied her here.

As then, as I'd witnessed in my flashback, the darkness seemed to emanate from the tank itself. Only the light of my glowing ball appeared to penetrate its suffusing blackness.

It was the darkness that had swirled around the English witch when she'd appeared within my room.

The darkness that had curled endlessly around Richard and the other demons.

A darkness that seemed itself to be alive: to breath, to move, to have powers of its very own.

The tank was still filthy, smeared with the caked-on mud it had accumulated in battle. Everywhere, too, there was a dull rust-tint to everything: though I feared it wasn't rust at all.

I feared that it might be dried blood.

Across the tank's hatches, the movable slabs of metal that would normally allow the entrance or exit of its crew, there were thickly welded bands of iron. These were also strewn with what appeared to be strange symbols, perhaps even seals.

No crew could break their way through those thick bands. Was the crew still inside, long dead, their bodies turned to dust or bones?

Was that why the huge tank emanated such an unnerving sense of evil?

But then, why had it engendered fear in the English witch so long ago? When the crew would still have been alive?

Underlying the rhythmic breathing, there was now another sound; whispering, muted giggling.

The whispering and giggling of _children_.

Cautiously, edgily, I stepped a little closer towards the tank's angled walls.

The closer I drew, the louder the giggling seemed to be.

It was definitely coming from _inside_ the tank.

It was the mischievous, muted chuckling of children, hiding as they played a devious prank.

Children of the staff?

Were the staff human after all?

The children could have climbed in through a hatch out of my sight; one of those I presumed you would find on top of the gun turret.

Slowly, silently, I placed my ear against the metallic side.

The whispering, the giggling, came to an immediate halt.

The tank was completely silent.

As it should be.

Even the breathing had ceased.

As if it had never, ever been alive after all.

Which, of course, it shouldn't be.

Or was it simply holding its breath?

Slowly, silently, I pulled my ear back from the tank's side.

I still had a hand against the filthy iron wall. A cloud of dust swirled around my fingers, as if I had disturbed the caked-on mud.

A dark cloud, as if of oil-black smoke.

I pulled my hand away.

Some of the curling black swirls came away with my hand from the tank's side. Wrapping tightly around my fingers.

Wraith-like, the now thickly black smoke stretched back towards the tank. More and more of it was coming through the iron sides, more and more of it as I anxiously tried to shake my hand free of it.

The wisps of smoke curling around my fingers solidified, became small fingers in their own right; the fingers of a hand tightly grasping mine.

With a gasp of horror, I tried to jump back – to wrench my hand free of the tightening, desperate grip.

Instead, the more I tried to pull my hand clear of the tank, the more of the smoky wraith I was drawing out of the tank.

The more, too, that it was less wraith-like, and more solid.

The darkness flowed in the air, like black ink spreading through water. Only this was a darkness that increased in intensity, in solidity, as it spread.

The fingers now had a full hand. The hand an arm. The arm a shoulder, and part of a chest.

An abrupt burst of black swirls exploded from the shoulders, swiftly coagulated, rapidly took form: and became in one horrifying instant the head and face of a snarling, demonic child.

*

# Chapter 28

My mother and father have tried to make the best of it.

Even so, our room is damp, cramped, squalid. Forever too dark, despite the flickering electric lights.

We're already dressed in our nightgowns. Mother's combing our hair, tying it in pretty bows. Though, of course, that doesn't include Helmut; just me and my four sisters.

Even so, Helmut is seated with us. None of us have been allowed to play with Blondi tonight. Earlier, I thought I heard him growling sadly: perhaps even in pain.

Mother's behaving even more ridiculously than usual.

Trying to make out that soon we'll be able to leave this dreadful bunker. That soon we'll be rescued from the advancing Russians.

Unlike my younger sisters and brother, I don't believe this.

I can sense the fear in everyone around me. The hopelessness.

I heard a gun shot earlier, a gun shot in the bunker. No one told me who had fired it, or if anyone had died.

I'm tired, exhausted. Drowsy.

I think there was something in the drink we've just been given.

Already, little Heidrun is asking mother to tuck her up into bed.

Helmut is climbing up into his bed, like me having claimed one of the top bunks. The others have to share the lower beds.

I'm sure the drink had been made by one of the strange men and women we think might be witches or wizards: but mother told me not to be silly when I asked her what was in the drink.

*

There are just three of us in here.

It's darker, even more cramped, than...than what?

I can't quite remember.

There were another three of us, I know that – I know that because I can sense them nearby.

I can hear their whisperings. Their combined breaths.

Like us, they're now encased within a dark machine – no, they _are_ the machine.

Like us – whatever we are, whatever we were – we're the dark shadows of the machine. Without which it would have no real substance.

At least I can now see the outside, the top of the earth. Before, I seem to recall, I was _under_ the earth.

It's a mess, this earth. A jumble of wreckage, of demolished buildings, of strewn rubble.

It's dark out there too; but only because it's night.

Every now and again, it all lights up in an explosion of gold, of amber.

My other siblings are in the huge machine I can see off to my side. A machine similar to ours.

A tank. A tank twice the size of two further tanks that wait nearby.

Those inside these smaller tanks aren't part of the machine. They're afraid.

They're worried. They have little petrol. Little ammunition.

They are going to die on this fool's mission.

They glance towards us warily, wondering who crews our machines. Wondering why the darkness of the night seems to increase as it closes around our machines.

Wondering why we are so silent. So brooding.

The English witch knows why we sit here silently brooding, though.

She's running across the rubble, accompanied by two soldiers.

Running towards one of three half-tracked vehicles that are patiently waiting with us. The rear doors open, allowing the newcomers to hastily enter.

There are angry shouts from inside this vehicle. Shots.

Three limp bodies are thrown from the rear of the half-track.

Two women. A man: a Field Marshall.

They were hoping to escape. The men with the English witch have killed them.

*

A machine this size, this heavy, crushes anything in its way.

It's ruthless. It's part of its nature.

Uncaring. Unyielding.

We rush through the ruins of Berlin.

There are still areas of road, of the wide avenues, that are clear enough of rubble to allow passage for a convoy of heavily armoured, tracked vehicles.

We move as fast as we can, with my siblings and me leading the way. The two smaller tanks bring up the rear.

Anything, anyone, in our way is considered an obstacle. We run over them. We obliterate them with a bark of our gun.

Our fire is returned ten fold.

A half-track is hit along one side: it's sent whirling into the air.

One of the smaller tanks, struck hard beneath its turret, crashes headlong into a pit of soldiers.

A second half-track takes a shell full on its front. It skews wildly off to one side, ablaze.

The English witch is still safe. She had originally been in the half-track that had spun up into the air.

In that instant, she had changed vehicles.

We continue on our way.

We don't stop for anything.

Especially not for the mass of wolves, who vanish with a crunch beneath our tracks, or dissolve into clouds of blood within the rain of bullets.

*

# Chapter 29

Planting a Rose Within Your Mind: Part 2

Take in the rose's every detail, until you can clearly picture it within your mind, even when you look away from the rose itself.

Now you have the seed to bring that rose to a more fulsome life.

A Guide for Young Wytches

She wouldn't let go of my hand.

The more I tried to wrench free of her grip, the more of her that came free of the tank; as if she were using me to break out from her sealed confinement.

She grinned maliciously, her teeth bared, her eyes wide with hate and anger.

I swung out at the side of her head with my other hand, the one in which I'd been holding my only source of light – the sparkling wassail ball.

The ball smashed against the demonic girl's head.

And I was abruptly plunged into a sheer, impenetrable darkness.

*

I fell back, back towards the cold, hard ground.

I'd broken free of the grasping hand.

But I was enveloped in a complete blackness.

Was the girl here with me, freed from her imprisonment within the machine?

Had she rushed off, leaving me here?

I could hear the whispering, the whispering coming from the tank, once more.

The slow, sullen breathing was back too.

I needed to get out of here as soon as I could. Yet, without any light to guide me, the only exit that I knew for sure existed was the very staircase I'd come down on.

Thinking carefully about where I must have fallen, where I must be in relation to the tank and the base of the staircase, I cautiously rose to my feet, making sure I wasn't risking confusing my sense of direction.

Even so, it took a few minutes of scrabbling around in the darkness, reaching out as far as I could with my hands, before I gratefully grasped the freezing metal of the spiral steps.

With a sigh of relief, I began to hurriedly re-climb the steps.

I was heading back up towards the garden. Back towards the castle, and Richard, and Lisa.

And the English witch.

But I couldn't see what other option I had.

*

# Chapter 30

Some of the people you mistakenly call friends are actually vexations to the soul. Recognise them for what they are. Don't dismiss them; simply avoid them as much as possible, until they at last thankfully vanish from your life.

A Guide for Young Wytches

What was the English witch doing here, in this castle?

Why had the Germans sacrificed some of their own children, a convoy of their soldiers, to ensure she arrived here?

And why had they left unused all those tanks and armoured vehicles that could have helped them hold back the Russian attack?

Of course, even all those tanks and half-tracks couldn't have held back the Russians for ever. They could only ever hope to simply delay the inevitable.

Unless – unless they were crewed by demons.

Demons like those poor children, who had been forced to crew those tanks.

Just two tanks had caused mayhem amongst the besieging Russians.

A whole squadron of them: well, they might well have been invincible. Certainly, they would have been capable of relieving those under siege in the bunker.

The English witch had been sent here to release the demons kept imprisoned here. Or, maybe, not just to release them; but to ensure she could _control_ them.

Otherwise, what was to stop the new demonic army turning on the Germans?

But if they could create demonic crews from children, then why didn't they simply – no, that would be _unthinkable_ , wouldn't it?

Perhaps such a crew, anyway, was equally hard to ultimately control. Or maybe it was simply too hard to replicate the spell that had brought them into that terrifyingly new, dark life.

Besides, _Richard's_ demons were the real thing: ones who had fought long ago, being virtually unstoppable until a spell weakened then entrapped them.

I climbed the winding staircase as swiftly as I could, wanting to leave that dark cavern behind me as soon as possible. When I finally crashed with relief through the door leading into the garden, I sucked in great lungfuls of air.

The magpie was still there; like he'd been expecting me to return.

Like he was grinning at my foolishness.

Yet there was something even odder about him, something I should have noticed earlier.

He wasn't _really_ a magpie.

His colours were wrong; they were reversed. Black was where white should be, white where he should be black.

Like an all-black raven, who's splashed his feathers in white paint; or covered them in snow.

*

'Back already?'

This time, the English witch spoke with a cheery tone.

She didn't, as last time, appear once the magpie had faded: she appeared from behind one of the taller bushes, as if out for an afternoon stroll.

She smiled, as one would if they'd unexpectedly come across someone they knew on just such a stroll.

'You mean you seriously weren't expecting me?' I snapped in reply.

'Oh, I'm sorry; obviously you're angry with me.'

She pouted girlishly, as if I were being unfair on her.

'You knew what was really down there: did you hope those demonic children would finish me off?'

'If you _really_ think that, I must congratulate you on how bravely – or maybe _stupidly_ – you're just standing there, talking to me without a care in the world.'

I frowned, puzzled. She had a point; why was I being so calm about all this?

'Ah, I see, I see!' she breathed excitedly. 'You haven't figured _that_ point out yet, have you?'

'Point? It depends which _point_ you mean. If you mean have I figured out that you were going to help the Germans raise a demonic army, then yes: I have worked _that_ one out. What I don't know is _why_.'

The magpie eyed me curiously once more. I sensed he wasn't impressed, perhaps even a little disappointed.

The witch pouted disappointedly.

'No, no! _That_ wasn't the point I'd meant! Obviously, _I'd_ worked out that _you'd_ worked out what the tanks below were for. As for the _why_ : well, the German's promised a whole new dawn of paganism, didn't they? Wouldn't it be _natural_ for me to be helping them?'

'So what went wrong? Why is Richard still imprisoned here?'

'Because _I_ was the one who made sure he wouldn't be released.'

'You couldn't control him?'

She shook her head.

'If Richard had been released, _no_ one would have been able to control him. That's why I had to stop the Germans from carrying out their plan; why I had to win their trust, persuade them that I was the best – the _only_ – person who could accomplish what they asked.'

'Hah! You seriously expect me to believe that you were – what? Some kind of spy, working for the Allies?'

'You saw the tanks: all completely unused. Well, apart from the one containing the poor Goebbels children, of course. We lost the other tank, the one containing their sisters and brother, on the way here. And yes, if the Germans had raised a whole armoured corps like that, they _wouldn't_ have lost the war; believe me!'

'Is that why you're still here? To make sure he doesn't escape?'

'Hmn, so you're beginning to believe me, yes?'

She smiled.

' _Beginning_ to...yes,' I replied doubtfully. 'But not _completely_!'

She smiled again. With a wave of a hand, she indicated the darkness around us, the darkness spreading into other areas of the garden.

'You _have_ to believe me, Danny: because if you don't, then Richard is going to be free once more.'

*

# Chapter 31

Place Pine needles in a loose-woven bag and run bath water over it for a cleansing and stimulating bath.

A Guide for Young Wytches

'The darkness is spreading – and Richard's power is increasing?'

As I asked the question, I studied the strange way the dark cubes of the garden abutted the snow covered areas with a bizarre preciseness, an unusual sharpness.

The English witch nodded in agreement.

'He's still weak, of course; but for how much longer, I can't be sure.'

'But if you're still here, why aren't you stopping him? Why aren't you stopping the spreading of the darkness?'

She smiled wanly.

'Because I'm also now part of the darkness; imprisoned here, just as much as Richard is imprisoned – for the moment, at least – within the castle. He caught me unawares; I made the mistake of allowing him to charm me, to put me off my guard. He _is_ charming, isn't he?'

She observed me knowingly. I blushed.

'But the snow, the _spell_ that created the snow; can't you add to it in some way, increase its power?'

'I can have hardly any effect on what used to be my world. Besides, the spell that originally weakened Richard all those hundreds of years ago would be beyond my capabilities anyway; I'm so glad you've returned to strengthen your charm.'

'Return?' I frowned in puzzlement. 'What do you mean; I've returned?'

She grinned, chuckled: stared in wide eyed amazement at me when I still appeared bewildered by her laughter.

'But don't you realise yet, Daniella? _You're_ the witch; the witch who imprisoned Richard here!'

*

'A witch? I'm not a witch!'

'Daniella: you saw for _yourself_ how you took the snow _back_ with you! It really was _the_ most brilliant spell I've ever seen! A circular spell, working across the centuries: _that's_ what makes it all so incredibly powerful. It has no beginning – and therefore, it also should have no _end_!'

'This is madness! I'm no witch! I was there, yes; somehow, I really went back hundreds of years. But there must have been another witch there, helping the knights. They were moving so fast. And the snow was already there!'

'No, no: the snow didn't appear until _you_ did, Daniella! Yes, other witches _were_ helping the knights – but none was so powerful that she could have conjured us the snow!'

'I have _no_ powers! I don't know _anything_ about witchcraft!'

'Yet _here_ you are! Returned, from all those years ago when you _first_ lived!'

'That's just not possible!'

'For a witch – a _powerful_ witch – _few_ things are _impossible_. You leave a memory of your presence within an object – the angel, I suspect, for it's far, far older than you imagine. Then whenever a certain situation repeats itself, that memory is recalled into being: much as when a recorded song is played.'

'And what of _my_ memory? Why can't _I_ recall that what you're saying is true?'

'Perhaps because there are still _elements_ of that certain situation I mentioned that have yet to be played out?'

'Which _elements_?'

She shrugged, as if unsure.

'Haven't you read the book?' she asked.

I shook my head.

'Of course not!'

I realised I sounded horrified by the suggestion.

'Then _there_ is your answer!' she replied. 'How can you _expect_ to remember when you haven't read the book?'

*

# Chapter 32

To seek help from fairies, string hazelnuts on a cord and hang it up within your home.

A Guide for Young Wytches

As soon as I was back in my room, I rushed towards the clothes drawer.

I snatched the ancient book from out beneath the tangled shirts I'd left in there.

Could there really be any answers to my problem, to my bewilderment and confusion, within these pages?

I'd expected the title of the book to have changed once more; but no, it was still the same as it had been when I'd last seen it – _A Guide for A Wytch_

As the English witch had instructed me, I closed my mind to everything going on around me – then opened the book.

The pages that fell open before me detailed the casting of a spell; a spell to send a person into the darkness.

It wasn't a difficult spell.

In fact, it was a surprisingly easy spell.

There was nothing about it that struck me as being ridiculous.

As being impossible to accomplish.

It was all remarkably obvious.

The darkness had always been with us. It was a source of power; of spiritual power, magical power.

The realm of ravens, of demons. All of which could be used to our own ends, provided we knew what we were doing, what we were truly capable of.

All this, this new knowledge, wasn't something I was actually reading within the book

It was all coming _through_ the book: knowledge coming through from that very dark side.

A witch draws her powers from that dark side. No matter how good, how innocent, she presumes herself to be, it is only through that dark side of her that she gains her powers, her capabilities.

And there is, indeed, a dark side of her. For with every creation of a new witch within our world, a new witch is born within the darkrealm.

Her sister image.

Her darker image.

And as the powers of the witch grows, her darker sister naturally grows in power with her. And that darker witch, envying the life of her sister, seeks to use that growing power to take over her sibling; to enter this world, where her powers will become greater still.

To remain a good witch, a _white_ witch, therefore, the witch in this world has to be permanently on guard; lest her own growing powers become her own downfall.

This book introduces you to that dark side, to that power.

It has instructed the training, the creation, of many witches.

For it is itself a creation of the darkrealm, of the dark witches.

Within their world, they were at war with each other.

Vying for power over each other. None willing to give way.

Until, it was agreed, they could only unify under a king.

Someone who was already a king in the other world.

But what king needed to be a witch?

Which king, who already held so much power, would risk opening himself up to the dangers of the darkrealm?

And then, at last, they found him.

A powerful, warlike king who was desperate for help.

*

# Chapter 33

What a strange book!

He laughs as he picks me out from amongst the books. Books his captor has graciously provided him with.

Imprisonment for a king is a world away from imprisonment for those of a lesser breed.

Not for him a dungeon, set deep beneath damp, cold, airless ground.

No, for him it's a high tower.

It's imprisonment, nonetheless. Yet not one that doesn't come with certain luxuries, certain items expected of a civilised, well-educated man.

He opens me up out of nothing but curiosity.

He chuckles again; _How ridiculous!_

He stops laughing when a rose appears before him, one he can pluck out of the air.

Such a simple spell, anyone can learn it.

And already, his darker brother is forming.

*

The darker brother grows in power as the king produces for himself a cup of sparkling spring water.

He quenches his thirst: his thirst for power; his thirst for freedom.

My title, my contents, change quickly; the king's eagerness to learn is impressive. It has to be rewarded.

The still hovering rose branch sprouts roots, roots that snake through the air.

They reach out towards the mortar running between the stones comprising his cell.

Finding sustenance there, they spread all the quicker; running throughout the castle, thickening in size, drawing out moisture so that the mortar dries and breaks.

The roses are beautiful, spreading thickly, richly. The castle, of course, is paying the price for such a glorious spread of colour and perfume.

Similarly, the empty cup is filled once more, a spring of water spouting from the floor.

The spring runs back towards a source that is a stream, the stream towards its own beginning as a river.

It all flows through the castle, weakening foundations, drenching and swiftly rotting supportive timbers.

Soon the tower around the king begins to crumble. To rapidly fall into disrepair as if neglected for centuries.

In my world, it has indeed been left to the detrimental effects of centuries of inclement weather, to the wearing away of wind, water, and a complete lack of care.

Naturally, when he walks away from the now totally bare peak of the mountain, the king takes me with him.

Back to England.

Back to the court of King Richard.

*

# Chapter 34

Utilise the same skills you learned for making a wand to create your own Talisman.

Let the natural shape of the wood suggest and inspire your carving, adding symbols relevant to its use.

It may be worn as a brooch, around the neck, or carried within a pouch.

A Guide for Young Wytches

Like his name sake – his original brother in _this_ world – Richard has been placed by Lisa within a high tower.

Unlike the Lionheart, however, this demonic Richard has been placed within the high tower for his own safety.

As the English witch had explained to me, Lisa has instinctively realised that I'm here to cause him harm.

She had seen the disappearance of the angel as an ill omen. My unexpected arrival had only added to her sense of unease.

Lisa was in love with Richard. She had arrived here as a young girl, no older than I am now.

Richard, of course, had been the age he is now, has always been the age he is now.

Apparently young enough for her to fall in love with him.

And she, of course, had been young enough for him to fall in love with her.

Only as he refused to age did she begin to realise his true nature. But by then she was too deeply smitten to see any ill within him.

And he, he simply forgot that he had loved her. Forgot that they had once been the same age.

For part of the spell ensures he can never truly remember who he really is.

Although even that part of the spell, of course, is weakening. Weakening as the darkness in the garden, within the castle, grows.

*

Will the spell I've learned from the book finally cast Richard completely back into his realm of darkness?

The English witch had assured me that the book would provide me with the means to defeat him: that, even though her own powers were now limited within my world, she would do all she could to ensure I was safe.

Richard was still weak, she had said: he shouldn't be any problem, even for a novice witch.

Despite all these reassurances of the English witch, I climbed the steps leading up to the tower's highest room with a nervousness that left me visibly trembling with fear.

The stairs wound upwards, narrowing as they spiralled ever higher.

Naturally, King Richard hadn't needed to continue practising his newly discovered skills of witchcraft. He had more than enough worldly power, and he was wily enough to recognise that improving his capabilities would leave him open to the treacheries of the darkrealm.

Even so, the darker Richard's own powers were phenomenal, for he was a creation of the book, itself a creation of many witches, of numerous powers and skills.

So phenomenal, in fact, that he had continued to live long after the king had died, rather than the more customary century.

The ancient door leading into the small room wasn't locked.

Obviously, Lisa hadn't expected me to come into this part of the castle, which was so far from my own room.

The room was incredibly small. There was room only for a small, simple bed.

It was a complete contrast to the luxury of Richard's own room.

Richard was asleep in the bed, his breathing heavy, laboured.

He looked so innocent. So handsome.

That, the English witch had warned me, was a major part of his power. Hadn't it led to her own mistakes, her own downfall?

The beam of light coming in from the sole, slim window added to this sense of spiritual innocence. It fell across the pure white sheets of his bed in an almost religious fashion.

The falling snow softly tapped against the glass, the only sound but for Richard's pained breaths.

I hadn't brought the book with me. The incantation had been easy to remember.

As I opened my mouth to rush out the very first words, there was a flash of white light by the window.

The angel was hovering there, caught and illuminated in the narrow beam of white light. Glistening and sparkling in that gloriously white light, it could have been a real angel, but for its miniature size, its complete motionlessness.

Even so, its very stillness, its silence, added to the sense of sublime serenity.

As I had seen once before, when the English witch had appeared in my room, the angel appeared to rapidly dissolve in the diffusion of light. With an urgent fluttering of wings, it transformed into the magpie.

Had the English witch decided to offer me her support, her guidance?

I glanced quickly about the room, hoping she was indeed here.

And she was; she was by the bed, by Richard.

Yet although she seemed aware of Richard, she didn't seem to register my presence.

She wasn't really here, it seemed to me. She was oblivious to me, to the surrounding room.

She wasn't darkly dressed, or suffused in darkness.

It was the English witch as I had seen her when approaching the castle. Before she had been imprisoned within the darkrealm.

*

Around the English witch, darkly-uniformed men stand rigidly.

German officers, soldiers.

Watching her intently, expectantly. Waiting for her to accomplish something.

She closes her eyes, concentrating deeply.

Her outstretched hands pass through Richard; for her, he isn't there, after all.

Weirdly, she's intently staring at what must be an empty bed.

She raises her hands, runs them slowly above and then even through the bed. As if forming a shape of a person there. Closely following the contours of a seated figure.

Something akin to light, yet in substance perhaps more like milk, or the latex pouring from a deliberately cut tree, begins to flow from her. Not just from her hands, but from her whole body.

Yet it is her hands that are dictating the formation, the solidification, of that milky latex.

A body is forming beneath her flowing hands.

Another Richard.

A Richard who's slightly different to the Richard I knew was really lying there.

This newly created Richard is seated, as if on a specially prepared throne, rather than lying on a bed.

And yet, yes, he is asleep, although he doesn't seem anywhere near so ill, so laboured in his breathing.

It's the witch who's finding it hard to breath. As she rises from beside Richard's side, she almost stumbles, perhaps weakened by her spells and charms.

A flash of blue light abruptly spreads out about foot before her, much as a tin of blue paint would explode if flung at a large pane of glass.

The witch is thrown back, and up into the air, effortlessly passing through the room's wall (which, of course, doesn't exist for her).

Instead, she flies the length of what would be a much larger room. She comes to an abrupt, bone-jarring halt as she finally strikes a wall that remains invisible to me.

A darkness suddenly spreads around me: but, like the witch, it isn't a darkness confined by the room I'm standing in.

There's a shiver within that darkness as a figure confidently strides past me.

At first, I take it to be one of the darkly-uniformed soldiers. Yet its presence leaves me trembling.

It's one of Richard's demons, come late to rescue him from slipping under the witch's control.

Just as I'd witnessed at that battle that had taken place centuries ago, the demon moves as if part of the darkness itself. It's impossible to tell where the air is darkened and where the darkness of the demon comes into being.

It flows effortlessly past me, effortlessly through the air, like smoke caught on a swift breeze.

Just as a haze of blue light had burst around the English witch, a splurge of midnight-blue suddenly surges around the demon.

It runs and flows around him, yet stays at least a foot away from his dark body, as if flowing over a glass dome.

The English witch has cast a retaliatory spell. Not with outstretched hands, as I would have expected, but with light that simply seems to emanate from within her.

Although she had appeared to fall painfully and limply to the floor after she had been flung against the wall, she now leaps up into the air as if partially flying.

The demon strikes back with his own bolts of blue light.

Once again, the light strikes and flows over what is obviously the witch's defensive shield. Yet some of that light seeps through what could have been cracks in that defence, bolts crackling viciously as they curl around the young girl's body.

She writhes, as if tortured with pain.

Although seemingly unaffected by the bolts of light, the soldiers scatter in panic as falling debris crashes amongst them. Others fruitlessly attempt to kill the demon with long blasts from their machineguns.

The witch's own strikes against the demon are hardly more successful. They merely stream around the curving shield.

Sometimes, they possess enough force to fling the demon backwards, lifting him off his feet to smash him against a wall lying far outside the room I'm standing in.

Similarly, a spiralling bolt from the demon casts the witch up high, throwing her hard against what would have been a ceiling for her.

Her body jolts with the impact, the agony.

She falls with a harsh thump to the floor. She looks too weak, too badly injured, to continue the fight for much longer.

The demon flings another bolt of light at her, one that cackles ominously as it penetrates the shield's growing cracks.

The witch writhes and screams as the shimmering light envelopes her: and then, abruptly, she was gone.

She had vanished.

Only the sparkling light remains, jerking and snapping as it continues to course over the memory of her crouching body.

I had just seen the English witch being been cast over into the darkrealm, as she had told me she had.

The demon strides over towards the bed, where Richard is still asleep.

He peers down at Richard, letting another, less harshly crackling form of blue light swim over him.

It appears to have no effect. Yet, for all I knew, it may have lessened the power of the witch's charms.

The demon, however, sighs irately, as if frustrated in his attempt to curtail any effect of the English witch's spells.

He turns to leave.

And then I realise the demon isn't a 'he' after all.

For she is the English witch.

*

# Chapter 35

The tiny five-pointed star, or pentagram, opposite the berry's stalk is an outward manifestation of the Rowan's protective powers.

A Guide for Young Wytches

The English witch had just banished the English witch to the darkrealm.

Didn't I learn from the book that every witch – no matter how morally good she hopes to be – has a darker side to her, existing within what is now Richard's realm?

So, the demonic witch was her dark side.

What better demon could Richard call upon for his defence against the English witch's spells?

Yet if the English witch had been cast into the darkrealm – well, then did that mean there were now _two_ English witches living in Richard's kingdom?

How did _that_ work out?

I flinched as yet another flash of blue light surged through the air off to my right. But it wasn't the casting of another spell, as I'd feared.

It was the magpie, languidly fluttering through the air.

I'd forgotten that a magpie isn't purely black and white; there's also, of course, a flash of dark blue along its wings.

What's more, this wasn't the magpie I'd seen in the garden. It was a magpie with its black and white feathers in the right positions; a black tail, white breast.

Like a dove, dipped in black. With, of course, that flash of midnight blue.

I'd never really noticed the streak of dark blue before.

A dark blue, like the sky at the end of a day, before the darkness of night – a point of crossover, where the two realms of light and darkness overlap.

Like the blue spells I've just watched being cast.

Like the light blue wassail ball, that allowed me to strike out at that poor demonic child.

The light blue of morning, as darkness gives way to the light of day.

Was this the same magpie that had appeared within the room earlier? My memory was too confused to be sure which magpie that had been: this one, or its negative.

'Daniella! What are _you_ doing here?'

Lisa was at the door. Even though she was obviously furious with me, she rushed past, almost knocking me out of the way.

She leant over Richard, swiftly making a quick check that he hadn't suffered any recent harm.

Making sure I hadn't injured him, it seemed to me.

'I...I haven't _hurt_ him.'

Of course, that was true. I wasn't going to add, naturally, that I had _intended_ to harm him.

Lisa glanced up at me, staring directly into my eyes with a ferocious intensity.

'Who _are_ you Daniella?'

'Who _am_ I?' What a strange question! 'You know who I am: I was on holiday, where I was fooled into thinking I'd met Richard there!'

'Corfu, yes? So tell me, Daniella; how did you get there?'

Weirdly, I briefly found myself having to think about this.

'We'll, by boat, of course.'

'You didn't _fly_?'

'Fly?' I chuckled. 'My parents wouldn't be able to _afford_ to fly! I'm not sure there's an airport there, anyway.'

'Oh, there's an airport there, believe me.' Lisa was still continuing to tend to Richard – making sure he was wrapped up well within the bedsheets, wiping sweat from his brow with a tissue – yet also frequently glanced my way with a suspicious glare. 'But why couldn't your parents afford to fly? You _do_ realise it's usually cheaper to fly than go by boat?'

'Well, yes, yes, of course...'

My voice trailed off doubtfully.

'Do you know what _year_ it is?'

Lisa asked this calmly, apparently innocently.

'Of course, it's...it's...'

I didn't know.

I really had no idea what year it was.

*

# Chapter 36

Write down on a piece of paper either a situation or the name of a person you are seeking protection from.

Next, wrap it around thorns gathered from the Hawthorn (May Tree or White Thorn). Then bury it all near to that same tree.

A Guide for Young Wytches

'Look at your clothes.'

Lisa remorselessly continued her inquisition, a remorselessness at odds with the tender care she was administering to the sleeping Richard.

'My clothes?'

I stared down at the blouse and skirt I was wearing.

'What's wrong with them?'

'A little dated, don't you think? For a young girl like you?'

'Are they? I hadn't thought so. Perhaps fashion's different here?'

'I checked the labels, the clothes in your room–'

'You've been searching my roo–'

Lisa cut off my complaint.

'Most of those labels went out of business just after the war. They haven't produced any new clothes for tens of years. I checked.'

'There must be some mistake–'

'Your clothes are far older than _I_ am. Yet, on you, they're like new. And I mean really new; like they've never, ever been worn before.'

I glanced down at my clothes once again.

She was right; the material sparkled, possessing none of the dullness of regularly washed clothes.

Even so, I protested my innocence, continuing to search for reasons and explanations.

'Holiday clothes; they're always new...'

'Half a century old, Daniella; they're over half a century old!'

'Where's all this going? I don't understand what you mean. Okay, so, somehow – I'm not sure how, I've got to admit – somehow I've got these old clothes. Perhaps from some sort of period shop, I'm not sure–'

I'm struggling to remember how it came to be that I'm wearing spanking new clothes that are actually from the war period.

At last, my mind grasp with relief at a fact that seems to have escaped Lisa's attention.

'But I had a _cellphone_ too! A _cellphone_! _That's_ from _now_! And I know what the internet is...and computer tablets!'

Even as I blurt it all out, it dawns on me that it all sounds strangely desperate. Like I'm trying to prove something I don't actually believe in myself.

'Sure you do,' Lisa agrees nonchalantly, at last rising from Richard's side and slowly approaching me. ' _That's_ what makes all this so strange, so – unreal.'

'So unreal – like Richard, maybe?'

The English witch had joined in our conversation.

She was suddenly standing in virtually the same position she'd been in when she had vanished. Unlike then, though, she wasn't crouched, wasn't screaming in agony.

A darkness writhed around her, wisps of a pure blackness snaking through the already dulled air. The magpie had vanished; although how long it had been gone, I couldn't be sure.

Which English witch was this one?

The one who had been imprisoned within the darkness?

Or the one who was a _part_ of that darkness?

If the latter, that made her, like Lisa, an ally of Richard.

'You!'

Lisa stared at the new arrival not with surprise but with sheer hate.

'You _know_ me?' The witch frowned in highly-amused puzzlement. 'Now that _is_ interesting – but for the moment, I'm not quite sure in what way.'

'You're working with _her_?'

As Lisa indicated the witch with an accusatory finger, she glowered at me now with as much hate as she had originally directed at her.

'The spell, Daniella,' the witch stated flatly, ignoring Lisa's fury as if it were all nothing more than theatrics. 'Use the _spell_!'

'No, no more spells!'

Spinning around, Lisa rushed towards and leant protectively across Richard.

I hesitated.

I'd never really been sure I wanted to hurt Richard; and I certainly didn't wish to harm Lisa.

And as soon as I cast my spell – then does that mean my own dark version is created within Richard's realm? A darker me that might one day seek to conquer me, to take me over?

'Ah, his own charm is still dangerously powerful, I see,' the English witch calmly observed.

Lisa saw that I was hesitating, that I wasn't certain about what I should do.

'Don't you realise what will happen if you kill him?' she asked tearfully.

'Of course she does!' the witch forcefully answered for me. 'Everything will be restored to how it should be!'

'You're letting more like _her_ free!' Once again, Lisa accusingly indicated the witch.

'And why _shouldn't_ I be free?' the witch coolly demanded.

I was completely confused.

Was there no one to help me decide what the right thing to do was?

*

'Richard; I must touch Richard.'

'No, no; you mean to _kill_ him!

'No, no: you'll only come under his _own_ spell, his own charm!'

I had to ignore both their protests.

Whenever I had touched something within this castle, it had revealed the truth to me.

How much more powerful would that be if I touched Richard himself?

I stepped forward, wondering if either of them would try to prevent me going ahead with this.

They both moved sharply, as if preparing to do so; and yet both relented.

The witch, I presumed, would have little effect in this world.

Lisa, I believed, was curious: a part of her reassuring her that this was the only solution.

I reached out.

I gently touched Richard's heavily breathing chest.

*

# Chapter 37

The angel was seated atop the tree, where it should be.

Alongside it, the blue wassail ball brightly glowed once more.

Yet this was no massive tree.

Yes, this was a tree that stretched as close as possible towards the room ceiling: yet the room was small, low, and heavily beamed.

It was an old cottage.

Mum and dad's cottage.

The home I had been brought up in.

The presents that had been strewn around the bottom of the tree had been unwrapped. The gaily coloured wrapping tidied up by mum had been tightly forced into a nearby wastepaper basket.

She and dad had gone off to the kitchen. Going through the final preparations for Christmas dinner.

The light from the blue ball sparkled. It penetrated through even the thick, packed darkness of the tree's branches and needles.

The light splayed across the tree's base, revealing a forgotten present there; hidden within the shadows.

Lying on the floor, stretching out an arm, I retrieved the heavy present.

Its wrapping was of mainly white and black, with flashes of blue; the colours and sheen of heavily falling, of thickly laying, snow.

The present had no tag.

It was simply scrawled with a large 'Mary'.

I eagerly opened up this extra-special present.

I opened up the unusual children's book I found inside.

Grabbing a nearby pencil, I excitedly scrawled a few lines on the first page.

'This book belongs to Mary Ibbots, December 1936.'

*

# Chapter 38

Making your Own Wand: Part 5

Once you have carved your wand, you need to allow it time to dry out.

If you have taken all the bark off, store it in a shed.

A Guide for Young Wytches

I wasn't the only one shocked by what I had just seen,

The English witch must have witnessed everything too, for even she appeared mystified.

Lisa was also awestruck, her expression one of bewilderment equal to my own.

'But...I thought _you_ had created the angel!'

The witch stared at me in complete puzzlement.

'It was your _route_ back; your _memory_.'

She was speaking now more to herself than to me, as if still trying to work out the meaning behind what she had just seen.

'And yet it existed – when you were a _child_?'

She glanced at me now as if I might have the answer to her dilemma.

Yet I was far more mystified than she was.

Didn't all this mean that _I_ was the English witch?

*

The dark witch didn't seem surprised that I was the English witch.

It seemed she was far more surprised to see the angel appearing farther back in my past.

She had spoken earlier of a witch providing for her own rebirth by installing her memory within an object. Obviously, she viewed the angel as just such an object.

'I...must have brought the angel here with me,' I stated uneasily, sharing my own thoughts with her in the hope that she could make sense of all this. 'It would be the perfect object to store my – _our_ – memory within, wouldn't it?'

How easily I've slipped into accepting that I'm a reborn witch!

'No, no!'

My other self, the witch imprisoned within the dark side, shook her head, her expression still one of wonderment.

'Couldn't you sense it?' she asked. 'The memory was _already_ there. Which means...which means...which means perhaps I'm nowhere near as clever as I thought I was!'

She laughed.

'I don't understand what's going on!' Lisa grimaced. 'What did I just _see_ then? Why did it seem _familiar_ to me?'

'To you _too_?'

The witch (the _other_ witch, my _other_ self – although, strangely, I still didn't feel like I _was_ a witch!) stared at Lisa in even more surprise.

Was no one capable of working out what all this meant?

And yet there's still another, even more puzzling aspect to all this – how had touching Richard given me this insight into _my_ past?

*

# Chapter 39

If you think of yourself as being you, you're still limiting yourself, still living only within the protective shell you have created around yourself.

A Guide for Young Wytches

'You don't seen surprised that I'm you: that I'm the witch you were, before you were banished to the darkrealm.'

The dark witch shrugged noncommittedly as I pointed this out.

'Because, of course, I already knew _that_ ; I was the one who'd recognised that your – _our_ – memory was a part of the angel. The magpie – it still had its elements of white, rather than being the pure black of a raven. It meant that, somewhere, there was an element of you that was still alive in the crossover between our realms; a crossover that meant I could access and utilise it to bring you back to life!'

Hearing this, Lisa was stepping farther away from both of us, dropping back closer towards Richard once more.

'So that I could accomplish here what you couldn't affect?' I asked.

'Of course,' the witch replied. 'It was the only way.'

'And yet – you say it _wasn't_ a memory that _I'd_ created.'

'The angel contained your memory when you were a child; which means that you, the child Mary Ibbots, were _already_ a witch recalled to life.'

'So I'm even older than half a century?'

'Me too dear; and I was left completely unaware of it! But why? And how?'

'But why did touching Richard show you _your_ life?'

The way Lisa asks the question, it's filled with more jealousy than curiosity.

'I saw _another_ vision; he seemed to flow _from_ me – to be _created_ by me! And yet – that can't be possible, surely?'

'Why would you _create_ him? When our very task was to destroy him!'

My other self says this with a strange tone of unease.

'So, I was right; you are here to destroy him!'

Lisa leapt to her feet, ready to strike out at us in defence of Richard. Even though she must realise such an act could well be reckless.

She wasn't to know that I still remained unaware of how to access any latent powers I might have. My imprisoned self, of course, was incapable of having much effect on this world.

'I'm...I'm not sure I _am_!' I answered honestly to Lisa's question, adding with the most profound sense of relief, 'In fact, I think I'm here to _save_ him!'

*

# Chapter 40

To stimulate psychic dreams, place fresh Ash leaves under your pillow.

A Guide for Young Wytches

A cold wind suddenly cut through my clothes.

I was outside, outside in the snow.

In the garden.

Lisa wasn't there. Nor was Richard.

But the English witch – the _dark_ witch – was.

She was standing in one of the darker squares of the garden. Smiling.

'Save him? _You_?' she snorted derisively. 'Surely you're not so naïve to think I would have recalled you with _all_ your powers?'

A blue light emanated from her, rushed towards me. It struck me so hard across the chest that I was sent flying back through the snow covered bushes.

The striking of the light was intensely painful. Added to this, the thick branches of the bushes whipped at me as I was sent crashing through them.

When I landed amongst the snow, I already felt defeated.

Unlike in the earlier battle I had witnessed, I had no shield to protect me. I also had no idea how to conjure one up.

Around me, another square of the snow-covered garden abruptly turned dark and snowless.

The dark witch observed this with a knowing smile.

'You know, it's a little _embarrassing_ knowing I'm connected to such a fool,' she said sternly, unhurriedly walking over to me. 'You've just made my role _so_ much easier!'

*

Another bolt of blue light crackled around me, making me writhe all the more in agony.

Nearby, yet another dark square of garden overtook a snow-covered one.

'I never expected you to be _this_ weak.' The dark witch grinned scornfully.

Every time she struck me with one of her spells – sometimes so hard it sent me flying across the garden, other times so weakly I was merely bowled over and over through the snow – the darkness around me grew.

Like I was losing a game. Losing badly.

I had the impression she could finish me off any time she wanted to.

She was playing with me. Making me suffer. Perhaps for past insults or injuries I could no longer recall.

'Is _this_ really why you recalled me?' I asked, my voice croaking harshly. 'You just wanted revenge? Revenge for something I did to you so far back in the past I can't even remember it?'

'No!' She frowns, pouts as if affronted by such a dreadful suggestion. 'I _did_ want you to kill Richard, of course!'

'Richard, your king? Why would you want me to kill him?'

The darkness of the squares shifted, flowed, as if fluid rather than merely air.

Richard stepped out of the darkness.

'She didn't want to _kill_ me: she wanted to _release_ me!'

*

# Chapter 41

Making your Own Wand: Part 6

To prevent cracking, larger pieces should be left to dry out slowly under a hedge, where the wind, rain and sun can slowly season it.

A Guide for Young Wytches

'Richard's dying! What's happen–'

Lisa's cry died in her throat as she caught sight of the dark Richard.

She had rushed through the door, out into the garden: no doubt seeking me to see if I were responsible for what sounded like Richard's increasingly weakened state.

But if Richard was still lying ill in bed, then who was this dark Richard?

_Two_ Richards?

Of course!

Just as there were two of me, two of the English witch. One in this world, one in the darkrealm.

I _hadn't_ brought the dark Richard through into this side of the world: I'd only pretended to, to satisfy the watching Germans.

The Richard I'd created was there as a barrier; to _stop_ the one from the darkrealm entering this world!

Lisa stared curiously, disbelievingly, at the amusedly grinning, dark Richard.

Her eyes began to open wide, as if in gradual understanding.

Releasing a sheen of blue energy towards her, Richard bathed Lisa in its light.

With a tortured shriek, Lisa crumpled to the floor.

'It's worked!'

The dark witch almost screamed in her joy.

Richard nodded, grimly satisfied.

'It worked!' he said with a pleased smile, abruptly disappearing once more into a swiftly enveloping darkness.

*

# Chapter 42

We cocoon ourselves from what we fear in the world: and in this way, we never become the butterfly.

A Guide for Young Wytches

Lisa was dead.

The closer I managed to drag myself towards her, the more I was sure of it.

The bolt of light Richard had encased her in had been far more substantial than anything the dark witch had thrown at me.

So I had been right; she had only been toying with me.

Weakening me gradually; just for the pleasure of it.

How had Richard managed to kill Lisa though?

Wasn't she purely in this world, and he in his?

Any affect he had should have been severely limited.

That's why they had needed me, of course; because I existed mainly in this world, where the good Richard also existed.

They couldn't weaken him, let alone kill him, apart from the slow process of gradually increasing the power of the darkness within the castle.

Once I had killed him, removed his presence from this world, then at last there would be a space for the dark Richard to occupy.

So why had they so suddenly changed their plan?

What had happened that made them decide instead to try and kill _me_?

No – they could have _easily_ killed me.

Instead, they have been _weakening_ me.

In a weakened state, I won't be able to resist the dark witch taking me over. Then, as a part of _this_ world, _she_ can kill Richard!

The darkness in the garden is almost complete. Only a few squares remain covered with snow.

The English witch hadn't been killed in that battle between her good and dark sides: she knew she couldn't afford to let the witch of the darkrealm take her over.

Instead, she had – what?

As I try to work out all these puzzles, I keep my head bent over Lisa, as if weeping over her death.

But I don't have time to weep.

I need to work out why I don't have the powers that the recalled English witch should possess.

If I realised how I could recover them, I might at last be able to fight back.

Fortunately, for the moment, the dark witch seems content to let me suffer the injuries she's already inflicted on me. Curiously she doesn't appear to want to weaken me any further, or to take me over.

Why?

Why is she having to wait?

She must have been frustrated when the English witch denied her the chance to take her over so long ago.

She must want revenge; resenting the lost years when she could have lived freely in this world. When she could, maybe, have even killed Richard herself.

Releasing the dark Richard into the world long ago.

The English witch had vanished – letting her memory flow into something close by, so she could be recalled when stronger.

The angel? But the angel already held a memory of her. And I never saw it hovering nearby within the later part of my vision.

No, it had to be something closer.

_Richard_!

She flowed into Richard!

The connection was already there, of course!

Richard had been formed _from_ me.

That's why, when I touched him, it revealed _my_ past.

And the dark witch; she _realised_ what that connection meant!

As I'm partly within their world, they can weaken me – and, through our connection, also weaken poor Richard!

*

# Chapter 43

Making your Own Wand: Part 7

A large wand may take a few months to dry out, but thinner pencil wands should only take a week or two.

A Guide for Young Wytches

There was a fluttering of moving branches, high up above me.

In one of the darker areas, I caught the flash of white that was the magpie.

It settled, almost silently, on the top of the dark tree.

In an instant, it was no longer the magpie, but the angel. Gracing the top of this majestically towering tree.

Alongside the angel, there was also the glistening blue of the wassail ball.

Restored.

Indestructible.

Such power wasn't lost; it was merely stored away someplace, waiting to be retrieved.

Its blue light sparkled, making what little remained of the snow lying around me shine with a similarly sky blue sheen.

No; the snow itself glistens like that, doesn't it? A coruscating blue sheen glowing around its edges, where light passes through its myriad crystals.

It's not the snow constraining the darkrealm. It's the blue illumination, a crossover of realms, yet also therefore a barrier: a separator of two states of being.

I reached out and touched the blue light. It expanded, crackled, danced beneath my fingers, its revived effervescence shielded from my darker side's view within my cupped palm.

If Richard has always held my powers, why hasn't he used them, recognised them?

Why, come to that, hadn't he inherited some of the powers inherent within the darker Richard?

Because, of course, I'd given him a faulty memory. Didn't my darker self say that Lisa had suffered because Richard could never recall when they had been lovers?

With a faulty memory, he would never be in danger of recognising who he really was; of dabbling in the witchcraft that would lead him into the crossover of the realms, leaving him open to being eventually taken over by the darker Richard.

Yet I had granted him enough latent strength to shield him from any takeover while he remained wholly within this world.

Until now, that is; a time when he's rapidly weakening.

Flinging my arm up and back, I cast the blue light towards my darker self.

She was flung back with the light, unprepared and unsuspecting. With no shield no protect her, she flew through the air, crashing against and shattering stone plinths, cracking tree trunks.

Her careering path through the garden was marked by a sheen of falling snow, a thick veil of flakes already moving back into the areas vacated by the darkness.

She groaned as, mildly stunned but nowhere near dead, she painfully stirred on the ground where she had fallen.

I rose to my feet, no longer feeling so weak, so beaten.

I dashed across the lawn, through the bushes. The snow was following me, swirling round me like so much beautifully disturbed blossom.

'Danny, stop, stop!' a male voice cried out behind me.

I stopped, turned.

Richard was running through the snow towards me, beaming excitedly, his dressing gown flapping around him like an orange flame.

He had fully recovered, no longer displaying even the slightest sign of illness.

'Everything's turned out just as it was supposed to!' he yelled elatedly.

*

# Chapter 44

To calm the mind, burn either blooms or shoots of the Broom.

A Guide for Young Wytches

Richard ignored the cold flakes of snow swirling around him as he strode towards me.

He smiled gleefully.

He had never looked more handsome.

If only poor Lisa had seen him like this.

But then again, she had: when she was younger; when he was well.

There was an abrupt thump, a crackling of electricity, of fire. The blue light of a cast spell rippled uselessly around my shield.

I contemptuously glanced back towards my darker self. She had risen unsteadily to her feet, taken advantage of the distraction to finally kill me.

It hadn't worked.

I had recognised, at last, where my powers had been stored.

I brought forth my own spell, letting the light rise up through my body, out through my skin, out towards my target.

The blue light danced and coursed through the air.

It hit Richard.

Even if he'd been expecting it, he didn't have the power to resist it.

Before he even crumpled to the ground, he was dead.

*

# Chapter 45

Making your Own Wand: Part 8

Once your wand is ready, sand it smoother, then stop it drying out further by applying coatings of either beeswax, oil, or polish.

A Guide for Young Wytches

The upper reaches of the dark areas were already letting in the first fluttering flakes of the snowfall.

Around and upon Richard, they were already accumulating, already covering him.

My darker self rushed by me, knelt down beside him, already weeping.

'You killed him! Even you're own creation; you killed _him_ too!'

While looking down at him, I couldn't help but see only the good Richard there.

'What choice did I have?' I answered blithely. 'It was time to put an end to all this. If I hadn't, your king would have eventually found some way to break free.'

She glanced up at me, some form of understanding beginning to flicker within her eyes.

'You...you _arranged_ all this, didn't you?'

'As long as he remained in his realm, I couldn't touch him. As soon as he entered Richard, he entered mine...'

I didn't need to offer any more of my weary explanation.

'But your power _came_ from Richard; how could you use it once he was no _longer_ yours?'

I shook my head, disagreeing with her. Yet hadn't I originally made the same mistake, assuming my capabilities had been stored within Richard, waiting there for me to access them?

'Lisa was the memory of my powers: when you killed her, they passed to me. Earlier than it seems I'd intended, as it was before my own memory was fully restored; a memory that had to be hidden from all of us, of course, until the moment was right.'

'Who _are_ you?' she demand, bewilderment clouding her eyes once more as she rose to her feet, glared at me accusingly. 'Why don't _I_ know who you _really_ are?'

She glanced down at Richard's body, still amazed, awestruck, that her powerful king had been so apparently effortlessly killed.

'How much power did _I_ really have?' She looked to me once more. 'Like your creation of Richard, I was given an incomplete memory, wasn't I? So I wouldn't _ever_ recognise who _I_ really was?'

'You're the dark side of a recall of what was necessarily an incomplete memory. You could never be who I really am.'

The snow was now covering her too. She stared at the flakes covering her arms in horror.

'No! You can't be! That _is_ impossible!'

She whirled frenziedly in the swiftly falling snow, flailing uselessly at the flakes, attempting to dash them from her arms, her body, her face.

She stopped, realising it was too late. It was fruitless.

She glared up into the seemingly endlessly swirling flakes

'You _can't_ be the _snow_!'

She looked everywhere about her, increasingly bewildered as she increasingly understood.

'The _castle_ ; you're the _castle_ too,' she wailed miserably.

'But you _created_ the snow, _created_ the castle...'

By attempting to use only reason, she was only adding to her confusion.

Then, at last, I saw the dawning of true understanding within her blazingly irate eyes.

'The _book_! When dark powers created the book, a balance was created in _your_ world. A power that could restrain it!'

'I simply needed time to decide what form I should take.'

She began to warily back away from me.

'But if you're telling me all this _now_...'

'Yes: it's time to end it all.'

I made her end as swift and painless as I could.

*

# Chapter 46

To attract love, string and hang the mature berries of the Juniper within your home.

A Guide for Young Wytches

The children play happily within the garden.

I brought them all here, of course.

Even the ones in the tank that had been damaged, and had got lost on the way here.

That's the advantage of entering the world every now and again.

You understand that some wrongs need addressing. That sorely mistreated souls deserve setting free.

Are such children of the dark, or of the light?

It's not for me to judge.

As for Richard, the Richard of the light, I've granted him life again.

Naturally, he has no true role now.

But that means I can now allow him a memory of whom he now is; a rich, young. handsome boy.

One who is well. One who can live and age naturally.

And Lisa? What role could there be for her now?

Still, I've brought her back to life too.

Brought her back as the young girl she had been when I had first introduced Richard to her.

'Don't....don't I know you from somewhere?' Richard asks gaily as he helps me take my bags out of the back of the taxi.

'Maybe we met once before,' I reply with a smile.

For, of course, Lisa and I are one.

And I love Richard as much as he loves me.

End
If you enjoyed reading this book, you might also enjoy (or you may know someone else who might enjoy) these other books by Jon Jacks.

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll's Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun

