I Am Alice by Joseph Delaney

Author:Joseph Delaney
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

WITHOUT A BACKWARD glance, I left the yard and walked east, back in the direction of the canal. I intended to follow it south, but I wouldn’t be heading towards Pendle. I’d keep going until I was far beyond the County. They said the weather was warmer down south and that it didn’t rain as much. It would be good to get a bit more sun on my face. I hated this damp blustery County climate.

The light was beginning to fail, so the sun must be very close to the horizon. Not that there was much chance of seeing it. Low grey clouds were rushing in from the west. Soon it would rain.

I felt no lifting of my spirits, no happiness at the thought that I was leaving my old life for ever. In my chest, where my heart should have been, was a lump of cold lead that made it difficult to breathe. I kept seeing the hungry skelts and those frightened children in their cages. Seven of them would be sacrificed in order to release the power of the egg; the remainder would be given to those bloodthirsty creatures.

The further I walked, the worse I felt. Even if I were many miles away when they killed those children, I’d still be guilty, wouldn’t I?

I’d kept watch while Lizzie snatched the child and hurt – maybe even killed – the mother. There was more than one type of guilt: you might do something horrible that you later regretted. But you could also feel guilty for something that you’d not done! If I didn’t help the children in some way, that guilt would stay with me for the rest of my life.

Something struck me like lightning. I could go and tell Arkwright, the spook, and lead him to the children. I could take him through the magical cloak, straight to the house.

But that would be very risky. He might assume that I was a witch, and either put me in a pit or kill me on sight! Still, it was a chance. I might be able to persuade him of the danger that faced the children; and I was the only one who could lead him through the magic cloak to save them . . .

Once there, I could slip away while he sorted out the witches and that pig, Salty Betsy. No doubt Lizzie would get away; she was crafty and had more lives than a cat.

Yes, that’s what I would do, I thought. So I pressed on faster towards the canal. Once I reached it, the mill lay only a little way further north.

I couldn’t have been more than five minutes from the canal when it began to rain really hard – the kind of downpour that could soak you to the skin in minutes. Next, forked lightning suddenly split the sky, to be followed moments later by a loud thunderclap almost directly overhead. It reminded me of that bad storm the night Lizzie had snatched me from Agnes’s house.

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