The Return of the Witch: A Novel by Paula Brackston

Author:Paula Brackston [Brackston, Paula]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2016-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

16

The woods had swallowed me up. I ran so blindly, so without an idea of where I was going that even though, at one point, I dashed across open fields I soon found myself drawn back into the woods. Perhaps I felt more protected there, more hidden. My body zinged with conflicting magical forces. I was aware of Gideon’s enchantment, dragging at me, tasting bitter in my mouth. I felt Elizabeth’s sweet counter spell, warm with love, but not strong enough to free me. And under it all I knew my own vibrant energies were trying to wake up, to break free. But I was a long way from being OK. I blundered through the dense woodland, clumsily bashing into tree trunks, stupidly, almost drunkenly dragging myself through tangles of brambles. It wasn’t long before I started getting fainter and weaker. Was Gideon reaching me even then? Where was he getting so much powerful stuff from? It was as if his abilities had grown madly since he had been taken to the Summerlands. Elizabeth said someone had helped him escape; were they helping him now, too?

After an hour or so I couldn’t go any farther. I found a hollow tree and crept inside. The smell of moss and fern and fungi and damp bark were soothing and familiar. I closed my eyes. I was in a crazy situation, had been for days, and I had barely had any time with a clear head to try to make sense of it all. I had to get a grip on things before something else happened. Before Gideon found me again. Had to give myself a chance to shake off his spell so that I could properly defend myself.

I felt a tiny warmth moving about in my pocket and my battered little mouse stuck out his head. I stroked his grubby white fur and tried to focus on his bright eyes. “Looks like we’re not in Kansas anymore, Aloysius,” I whispered to him. Some things I knew for sure. The first of these was that I was still near home. These were definitely Batchcombe Woods, which were only a few miles from Willow Cottage. The second thing was that I was no longer in the twenty-first century. Through a fog of enchantment I’d gathered together the crumbs of information the vile twins had let slip. They made pretty effective jailers, but they forgot I wasn’t completely out of it. So, we were smack in the middle of the Civil War, by the sound of it. How and why, well, I didn’t have the strength to try and figure that out. And Elizabeth had come after me. If it hadn’t been for her, I’d still have been in that house, still been Gideon’s prisoner. And I left her there to face him. After I’d been the one that said I wouldn’t run, wouldn’t live my life being hunted. And there I was, holed up in a tree, hiding. Despite the warm summer day I began to shiver.

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