Page 12 of The Changeling

‘Why?’

She was at a loss. ‘Because we gave it to you to protect you.’

‘Protect me from what?’

Another glance between my mother and great-aunt. ‘From danger,’ Nan said.

‘Why must we wear them, when no-one else has to? The other children laugh at us.’

‘They would be wise to protect themselves too. It is a good thing you still wore your birch rune.’ Nan pointed one gnarled finger at the twig and holey stone hanging on its red thread about my wrist. ‘Else you may never have found your way home again.’

‘Caiti, promise me you’ll no’ throw your rowan necklace away again,’ Mam begged.

I did not promise. I was too busy thinking. ‘Who was she? The woman who called me?’

‘It’s All Hallows’ Eve,’ Nan said. ‘Many strange things abroad this night.’

‘She called me the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. Said only I could stop the slaughter.’

Nan’s hands stilled. She looked down at me, frowning.

‘But I’m the second daughter, no’ the seventh. And she called me by a different name. Rue.’ As soon as the word left my mouth, I felt a sudden faint tug in my breast. I put my hand up to cover my heart, suddenly frightened again.

‘Ssh, child. Say no more. Let’s get you to bed.’ Nan took away my empty cup.

Mam bent and picked me up. ‘Oof! So heavy. You’re too big for me to carry now.’ But she carried me anyway, up the spiral staircase and into the room where Sorcha lay under the patchwork quilt, her thumb in her mouth, her blue eyes wide. After Mam had tucked me up and gone out, my twin wriggled closer and took my hand.

‘Where did you go?’

‘I got lost,’ I answered. Which was both the truth and not the truth, the first time I ever realised that telling true could also be telling a lie.

Sorcha soon fell asleep, but I lay awake, staring into the darkness. My body was thrumming with a strange kind of energy, so that my heart would not quieten. A furtive step on the stair, then Mam came back into our room. I shut my eyes, pretending to be asleep. She bent over me. The cold touch of metal against my neck, the snap of scissors. She went round to where Sorcha lay, and bent over her. The sharp sound of scissors again.

Her footsteps went quietly down the spiral staircase. I sat up, and put one hand to my hair. My fingers felt a short tuft near my ear. I slid out of bed and went barefoot down the steps, holding onto the rope. I stopped before the final curve and sat, listening. The clink of jars in the kitchen, then Mam came back into the living room. I peeked around the curve of the stair. By the light of the candle on the table, I could see she carried two long locks of hair, one black as night, one golden as day. She wove them together, securing them with red thread, then carefully anointed them with seven drops of dark sticky liquid from a small jar.

Menstrual blood.

It was one of the most potent of all magical ingredients, and kept only for the most powerful spells. Nan kept small jars of it, sealed with red wax and hidden away from the light, in a locked cupboard, along with mandrake root and nightshade berries and wolfsbane. The key to the cupboard usually hung on a red cord about Nan’s neck. I wondered if Mam had stolen the key, or if Nan knew what she had planned.

Mam stood up, picking up a spade. I shrank back. The light flowed towards me, so close it just touched my bare toes, peeking out from behind the curved stone wall. Then the front door opened, and the light ebbed away again.

Silent as a wraith, I followed her, wearing nothing but my chemise, and stood watching her from behind the shelter of the door as she dug a hole in the frost-hardened ground, burying the braid of our hair under the hawthorn’s roots. Then she danced around the tree seven times, chanting a spell. I was too far away to hear the words, but her gestures were wild and emphatic.

It was scary and strange. I had never known Mam to do a secret spell in the dark. As she came back to the house, I scampered up the stairs on all fours and scrambled into bed. I lay hidden under the quilt, listening with all my might, as she locked the door behind her.

Her breath came in noisy, ragged sobs.

III

Blue-Faced Hag

When I woke the day after my seventh birthday, I remembered only rags of the night before. Dark shadows, an eerie strain of music, skulls with hollow eyes staring out into the night. I limped down the steps slowly, the muscles of my legs tight and sore. Above the fireplace was a sun- cross made of two rowan twigs bound together with red thread, set within a circle of dried rowan berries. It had not been there the night before.

It was Hallowmas, a time to honour dead saints, and so to church we had to go. Mam dressed us in our best kirtles, over clean linen chemises. She did her best to tame my thick black curls, quite unlike Sorcha’s hair, butter-yellow and cream-smooth, then brought my boots. I cried and tucked my feet up under my kirtle.

‘I ken they hurt, my lambkin,’ Mam crooned. ‘But you canna go to church in bare feet.’

‘Why no’?’