Joseph Delaney by 1 The Spook's Apprentice

Author:1 The Spook's Apprentice [Apprentice, 1 The Spook's]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-10-17T23:04:12.846000+00:00

came down to her ankles. She wore a black cloak too, and either it was too long for her or the years she

had spent in the damp earth had made her shrink. It hung down to the ground behind her and it was this,

dragging over the grass, that seemed to be making the silver trail.

Her gown was stained and torn, which wasn’t really surprising, but some were fresh stains - dark, wet

patches. Something was dripping onto the grass at her side and the drips were coming from what she

gripped tightly in her left hand.

It was a rat. She was eating a rat. Eating it raw.

She didn’t seem to have noticed me yet. She was very close now, and if nothing happened, she’d

bump right into me. I coughed suddenly. It wasn’t to warn her. It was a nervous cough and I hadn’t

meant it to happen.

She looked up at me then, lifting into the moonlight a face that was something out of a nightmare, a

face that didn’t belong to a living person. Oh, but she was alive all right. You could tell that by the noises

she was making eating that rat.

But there was something else about her that terrified me so much that I almost fainted away on the

spot. It was her eyes. They were like two hot coals burning inside their sockets, two red points of fire.

And then she spoke to me, her voice something between a whisper and a croak. It sounded like dry

dead leaves rustling together in a late autumn wind.

‘It’s a boy,’ she said. ‘I like boys. Come here, boy.’

I didn’t move, of course. I just stood there, rooted to the spot. I felt dizzy and light-headed.

She was still moving towards me and her eyes seemed to be growing larger. Not only her eyes; her

whole body seemed to be swelling up. She was expanding into a vast cloud of darkness that within

moments would darken my own eyes for ever.

Without thinking, I lifted the Spook’s staff. My hands and arms did it, not me.

‘What’s that, boy, a wand?’ she croaked. Then she chuckled to herself and dropped the dead rat,

lifting both her arms towards me.

It was me she wanted. She wanted my blood. In absolute terror, my body began to sway from side to

side. I was like a sapling agitated by the first stirrings of a wind, the first storm wind of a dark winter that

would never end.

I could have died then, on the bank of that river. There was nobody to help and I felt powerless to

help myself.

But suddenly it happened ...

The Spook’s staff wasn’t a wand, but there’s more than one kind of magic. My arms conjured up

something special, moving faster than I could even think.

They lifted the staff and swung it hard, catching the witch a terrible blow on the side of the head.

She gave a sort of grunt and fell sideways into the river. There was a big splash and she went right

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