Chapter Four The Convening of Witches #2
‘You’ve carried this burden for too long,’ said Eadain, her words lacking sincerity. ‘It’s time to pass it on to another.’ She gestured to herself. ‘There are warnings carried on the wind, I’ve heard them; change is coming and we must be strong enough to heed it.’
‘I will be,’ said Isolde. ‘I have chosen an apprentice.’
Murmurs passed through those assembled. Eadain was not convinced. ‘Then where is she? If that were true, she’d be here.’
Kensa stayed as still as possible.
‘It’s a lie,’ continued the leader. ‘I say we take the Pact by force.’
A toothy wise woman, whose bodice was laced so tightly she near-spilled from it, interrupted the argument: ‘We are being watched.’ Her chin angled itself towards the underbrush where Kensa, Elowen and Jack hid.
The tall witch in black swept towards them, swift and crow-like. Her face was drawn and hollow, as an old pale stone smoothed by the wind. Kensa stood up, pulling the coven’s attention onto herself and away from her sister and her … well, Jack.
Eadain halted, then pressed on until she was standing over the young woman. ‘Do you know what happens to eyes and ears that see and hear what they should not?’
‘No,’ said Kensa.
‘Nothing.’ A thin non-smile. ‘I leave those in place and remove the tongue instead, so it can never speak of what was witnessed.’
‘Enough,’ said Isolde sharply. ‘This is the girl who is to apprentice with me. Save your scaremongering for the children foolish enough to believe it.’
Kensa could believe it, though she did not think herself foolish for it.
‘I recognise a smuggler’s daughter, but these two … ’ Eadain’s long fingers pressed into Kensa’s shoulder and forced her to step aside, revealing the others who had spied on the coven alongside her. Reluctantly, they shuffled into the orchard.
‘He has tin bones,’ said the toothy wise woman as she scanned Jack, who glowered in turn. Next, attention shifted to Elowen.
Kensa stepped in the way. ‘They’re not important.
’ Instinct told her not to let them examine her sister closely, and she listened to it.
There was a tug on her dress, Elowen’s fist at her back, holding on tightly.
‘Go on,’ she said, ushering Elowen to stand with Isolde.
She nodded to Jack to follow – a lengthy stare between the two – a small truce, a mutual agreement: Keep my sister safe.
Kensa scanned the wise women present, who were not all women.
One man stood with them, with a prominent brow and even more prominent glower.
His hands were dirty, much like Kensa’s.
She had heard of the herbalist Billy Rapson, but had not been told of his smell: darkly botanical, wild mint and mulch.
She knew Hawise of the Lizard, for she had stopped at the Jennings’ inn once or twice on her travels, keen to tell fortunes about love and lost riches. The others she did not know.
The toothy, buxom woman in her early forties – the one with the tight bodice – asked, ‘Is this going to take all day?’
Eadain levelled her stare at Kensa. ‘Is it?’
Kensa clamped her lips shut. ‘Isolde—’
‘You will not talk to her,’ said Eadain.
‘You will talk to me.’ Around the witch, the air was stifling.
Not even the insects dared fly by her. A sound, the wind, as it whispered her name to the ear Eadain leaned upwards.
‘How lucky you are, Kensa, to apprentice here. Do you know how we keep the storm raging? If one wise woman alone were to channel it, to ensure Portscatho’s residents stayed away and inside their homes, she would lose consciousness in a minute – or worse.
Yet many wise women working together can manage it with only a mild headache.
The Old Ways are about balance. When we arrived, the wind was already fast moving.
We simply channelled it. When you master this ability, you will understand what it means to obey our laws, to give and take.
This is what the Pact does: it keeps everything, us included, in check. Do you understand?’
‘I – I think so,’ said Kensa.
‘We shall see,’ said Eadain.
Hawise beamed at Kensa, at odds with the general mood within the orchard. ‘That settles it,’ she cheered, ‘we’ve no cause to be ’ere if the Pact’s secure.’
Tensions existed which had formed long ago. Kensa’s own confusion added to it. Strange, to meet others who did not revere Portscatho’s wise woman as they should, to have to reframe in her mind the sway which Isolde had over the village and beyond it.
Quickly, the power which guided the wind disbanded, swamping the orchard with a strong gust. This magic was different to what Kensa had experienced with the Bucka.
The Father of Storms had moved through her mind like water, firm and controlled, coaxing secrets from her in a babbling stream.
The wise women were an unwieldy force – an uncoordinated weight and haphazard presence.
Here was a true taste of the Old Ways, as the witches knew it.
If any other wise woman was uncomfortable with the decision, none voiced it, though two had a sour expression beneath a hood or behind a hand.
After a further statement – which Kensa did not hear through her ringing ears – the meeting was disbanded and the wise women began to shuffle from the orchard.
Eadain remained behind. What she said to Isolde no one else heard, before she turned to Kensa. ‘I will see you do your duty, Miss Rowe.’ As she spoke, her mouth tightened, making her question clipped and sharp. ‘Do you know why Portscatho is important?’
‘No,’ said Kensa quietly.
‘Because the Pact was formed in Portscatho, it is here the Old Ways are strongest. Here is an unseen seam from which power flows, resting in the space between Land and Sea. Do you think the Bucka would be half as powerful on any other shore? As such, the Pact requires a keeper with a strong will to hold it, and I think yours shall break.’
With those final words, Eadain swept from the orchard, her strides long and imposing.
Only when her black cloak had gone from sight, did Kensa risk facing Isolde. Portscatho’s wise woman had a rounded slump to her shoulders. Jack was close by, purposely avoiding Kensa’s gaze, no matter how hard she tried find it.
She wanted to say a thousand things to Isolde.
That she was sorry and hadn’t realised and was trying to be a good wise woman’s apprentice and now she was not sure there was such a thing.
Eventually, in a voice as small as she felt, she said, ‘I thought it would only ever be us two; I did not think there’d ever be anyone else. ’
Isolde raised her head. ‘You won’t have much to do with the coven.’ She frowned heavily. ‘I had hoped to keep them from you a while longer.’
‘Then you probably should’ve sent someone other than Jack to mind me,’ said Kensa, an ill attempt at humour.
Jack released a long-suffering sigh. Even then, he would not look at her.
One question lingered on Kensa’s tongue. ‘What happened last time, when someone waited too long to take an apprentice?’
Isolde’s answer was pained. She spoke on the Owlman, a legend in these parts, a bird as large as a man. ‘I was once his apprentice, in the days when the Roundheads marched on Cornwall.’
That was at least one hundred years ago, as far as Kensa remembered. ‘Will you become as he did?’
‘If a wise woman does not remember their calling, other forces can claim them.’
‘The Morgawr,’ said Elowen softly.
‘Yes, she was the first, the one who forged the Pact,’ said Isolde. ‘It was she who stood against man’s force and chained herself to an eternal agreement, allowing the Old Ways to slowly corrode her mind and body, changing it for ever.’
Eyes sparking, Elowen asked, ‘Do you think she was happier that way, as a creature and not a woman?’
Jack harrumphed at the question, his disapproval ever-present.
Isolde said plainly, ‘Yes.’
Kensa sniffed, irritated, as she always was whenever that evening on the Towan was brought to mind. And unsettled to think that any wise woman could change, lose themselves, forget. She never would, that was certain.
As though she could read Kensa’s thoughts, Isolde asked: ‘Do you intend to continue training with me, preparing for your apprenticeship?’
‘Yes,’ she replied quickly.
As much as today frightened her, it intrigued her more. Truthfully, she had, in part, welcomed the fear. It made her feel as though she was someone – someone worth making afraid. Not overlooked or brushed aside. In the orchard, standing with the coven, she was one of them.
‘Get them home, Jack.’
He nodded, leaving Isolde as he escorted the sisters down Portscatho’s hill.
Finally, the storm had exhausted itself.
Tentative sunlight bordered the clouds, promising a better day.
Kensa would have shared that sentiment, were it not for Jack’s expression.
When it came time to separate, he cleared his throat to speak. Kensa did not give him the chance.
‘I am to be the wise woman of Portscatho and I will not be lied to.’
Jack was not the young boy she had once known, thick brows drawn together. He had grown, somehow, in more ways than she cared to count. ‘You are not the wise woman yet,’ he said, ‘exactly as I do not run the mine yet, my father does, but I know what it takes.’
Elowen bowed forwards, hiding her face, and ducked inside, leaving the two on the front step with half the village in earshot.
‘You are to be a leader, the same as I,’ said Jack. ‘When are you going to act like it?’
Kensa had never seen him angry. And even in his anger, he was controlled. That did not matter, for she was furious enough for them both. ‘Is that how you plan to speak to the healer who’ll save your life one day?’
‘When she needs to hear it.’
‘As soon as I am old enough, I shall be the biggest thorn in your side,’ she spat.
Kensa’s heart was beating rabbit-fast and Jack’s parting words were a snare, delivered as he walked into the fading storm: ‘You already are.’