Emerald Greene and the Witch Stones Read online

  Jessica nodded, smiled. She took the CD and slipped it into her pocket.

  Emerald smiled, seemed to relax. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I knew I could trust you.’

  ‘Now, then,’ said a voice from the door, ‘am I gonna get any help from you girls this weekend, or what?’

  It was Gabi, pointing a paint-soaked brush at them. Her denim shirt and trousers were flecked with white paint, and there was a patch of it on her nose as well. She looked as if she had got into a dispute with several seagulls.

  Emerald Greene smiled nervously and gathered up her bits and bobs, frantically shoving them back into her satchel. ‘I, er, have to go,’ she said apologetically.

  Jess saw Aunt Gabi staring at all the components Emerald was gathering up from the table. ‘Physics homework,’ Jess explained hastily.

  ‘Right,’ said Aunt Gabi doubtfully. ‘It all looks a bit complicated. Hang on!’ She strode over to the table and plucked something out of Emerald’s hand. ‘Is that my egg-timer?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Emerald. ‘Um,’ she added, looking at Jess for help.

  ‘We needed something with a bell,’ said Jess quickly. ‘For the... circuit.’

  ‘Hmm, well, okay... I suppose it’s only an old one.’

  ‘And it’s not as if we eat boiled eggs a lot,’ Jess added under her breath.

  ‘Eggs!’ exclaimed Gabi. ‘You sure you won’t stay for tea, Emerald?’ She gestured with the brush. ‘You’d be very welcome.’

  ‘Very kind,’ said Emerald. ‘But I, ah... I need to feed my cat.’ She hoisted her satchel on her shoulder and waved an awkward goodbye, scurrying for the door like a startled rabbit.

  ‘Okay, I’m coming,’ said Jess, pausing to giggle. ‘Aunt Gabi, you look ridiculous.’

  ‘Oh, a bit of hard work makes you look ridiculous, does it? Put some old clothes on, grab yourself a brush and get painting, girl! And we’ll have you singing along to “Fernando”, please. It’s compulsory.’

  Jess, aware that she still had Emerald’s CD in her pocket, slipped it into her school-bag.

  Just then, Emerald popped her head through the back door again, making her jump. ‘One other thing,’ she said. ‘You have a... digital information network here?’

  ‘The Internet?’ Jess hazarded.

  ‘Er, yes... that. See how much you can find out about Professor Ulverston. Oh, and this.’ Emerald handed Jess a small piece of paper, a folded page from an exercise book.

  ‘Right,’ said Jess uncertainly. ‘I’ll try, Em.’

  Emerald nodded, smiled, and was gone.

  Jess unfolded the paper. Written on it in fountain pen, in Emerald’s neat, clean hand was one word: FREYGERD.

  Professor Ulverston was looking well - for a dead man.

  The Professor, who had been flickering in and out of time-phase ever since the discharge of energy at the standing stones, strode through Meresbury with the confidence of a man who had become used to not being seen.

  He shimmered through the streets under the gathering clouds, past people with their heads bowed as they hurried for buses, past the Big Issue seller on the corner, through the square to the Cathedral gate. His broad, knowing grin strangely looked more dazzling now that he was not fully corporeal.

  At first, he did not see Xanthë. She was lounging in the shadows of the gateway, her eyes clear and blue in her wizened old-young face. She unpeeled herself from the recesses - a slice of shadow, a dark column which lightened and shimmered into her flowing, grey form.

  Ulverston sighed, folded his arms. ‘Ladies, ladies,’ he said theatrically. ‘We can’t go on meeting like this!’

  The buzz and chatter of Meresbury blurred behind him, as if the city had simply slipped into a lower level of reality. Xanthë lifted her proud, high-boned face and shook her head.

  ‘It is the fool again,’ she said. ‘Ull-Verr-Stone. Does he not know when to leave us alone?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Ulverston, and rubbed his nose awkwardly, or tried to. ‘Look, I was just passing through, and - well, to cut a long story short, I was looking for you.’

  ‘You have something you wish to say to us?’

  ‘Weeeeeellll... yes, actually. Don’t do it.’

  Xanthë laughed, her teeth shimmering. ‘Is that all?’ she said mockingly, and pointed her staff at the Professor. ‘Begone!’

  ‘Ah. That sort of stuff doesn’t work with me, I’m afraid.’ Ulverston clasped his hands behind his back and started to pace up and down in front of the Cathedral. ‘So, you’re drawing power from the residual energy of the fissure, eh? Breaking through into the real world so you can live again? Dangerous!’ He held up a finger and wagged it at her. ‘Very, very dangerous - for humanity.’

  ‘We were abandoned by so-called humanity,’ Xanthë snapped. ‘Exiled. Sent to fester in the village of plague, then finally to drown there when they opened the rivers and filled the valley to make the Darkwater. Why should we care?’

  ‘Mmmm, well, from a technical point of view I really wouldn’t advise it. Nothing to focus the energy, you see. Could all disperse and fragment. Be terribly messy.’ He looked up, sharply. ‘I really wouldn’t do it.’

  ‘But then you are not like us,’ said Xanthë coolly.

  ‘Absolutely not. I’m a chap. A fellow. In fact I’m an Honorary Fellow, a very esteemed one of All Souls’ College, Oxford.’ He tried to tap his nose, missed several times and then shrugged, giving up. He hadn’t totally adapted to this non-physical entity business, he reflected ruefully. ‘And I have the Freedom of the City of Meresbury! Yes, they conferred that on me a while ago. People can be terribly nice, you know. Especially when one is a genius, like myself.’

  Meresbury’s landscape had faded into the background, molecules sizzling, pixellating and breaking up like a bad TV picture. Darkness gathered around Ulverston and Xanthë in their in-between world, and they circled each other like two predatory panthers.

  ‘Genius or not, your prattling is worthless,’ said Xanthë, staring past the Professor in contempt. ‘The Becoming will go ahead as planned.’

  ‘Ah, really? You know, I have learnt so much since being stranded in your little mid-world. I used to dismiss the supernatural as claptrap, do you know that?’

  ‘I have no desire to know what you think.’

  ‘Well, you should listen to me. I’m very clever,’ said Ulverston, without a trace of modesty.

  ‘You are an intelligent man, Ull-Verr-Stone,’ Xanthë conceded, ‘but you are still a fool.’

  Ulverston ignored her. ‘I still think a lot of it is claptrap,’ he went on, ‘but a lot of it is pure science, really, isn’t it? It’s just science beyond what we’ve already encountered. I find that fascinating.’ His eyes narrowed and he lowered his voice, affecting a mock-serious, doom-laden tone. ‘I also find it a little frightening, Xanthë - and so should you, hmm!’ Ulverston’s big, bulging eyes stared at her and he pointed accusingly at the witch. ‘You are going to cause a dimensional anomaly of the most terrible order. Already minor rifts and instabilities are opening across the town... Who knows what you’re going to let through? Mmm?’

  ‘The Becoming will go ahead,’ said Xanthë, but she gathered her robes around her haughtily and looked a little more perturbed than before.

  ‘Listen to me, Xanthë,’ said Ulverston, wagging his finger. ‘I had my doubts about what I was doing at the dig, but I can see now that I unleashed something beyond our current understanding. The grave I opened was the resting-place of a legendary Norse sorceress called Freygerd - a terrible, restless soul of horrible form, one who took human shape. She was only slain by the combined efforts of the men from the Viking settlements. And after they killed her, they took the body and interred her in pagan ground, because it was a place they feared.’

  Xanthë frowned. ‘The Vikings fe
ared nothing, Ull-Verr-Stone. They pillaged the ancient Britons’ tombs, scrawled runes on them, looted without mercy...’

  ‘Oh, but everyone fears something, my dear. They were a superstitious people. Beneath that contempt lay fear, believe me! They had long suspected that the ancient magic could exert great power over the land. And so they buried Freygerd in the centre of the ancient stone circle, and swore to tell no-one. Only someone must have broken their oath, because the secret was passed down through the generations - orally at first, then finally recorded in writing in some very interesting mediaeval documents.’

  ‘And you found these records?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Ulverston smugly. ‘I personally found them in the special, sealed vaults in the lowest level of the Bodleian Library in Oxford.’

  Xanthë’s eyes widened. ‘The city of learning.’

  ‘Well, quite. And to access these archives, you need a set of keys held by the Master of Chaucer College, given only to those in his closest circle of academic colleagues.’ Ulverston beamed at the witch. ‘I, of course, have just created the Edwin Ulverston Scholarship in Archaeology, and so my standing in the University is... respected, shall we say.’

  ‘You gave the authorities a bribe,’ said Xanthë coldly.

  ‘Oooh, I would hesitate to call it that! And so I embarked upon my greatest ever dig, half-knowing and half-fearing what I would find... I told myself it was all mumbo-jumbo, naturally. Had to concentrate on the scientific approach. The only way.’

  ‘And now you regret your actions?’

  ‘Ahh, well, regret is a strong term. I would have approached the matter differently, in hindsight.’ Ulverston spread his hands. ‘All I can ask now is that you don’t make it any worse. Think of it as a hole in a water-bottle, Xanthë. I made the hole, yes, for that I take responsibility. But you and your companions would be like water pouring through the hole and widening it! The very structure of Time could be in peril!’

  Ulverston now noticed that he and Xanthë were not alone in the darkness, and despite himself he could not help feeling a slight shiver.

  They appeared one by one in a circle around him, lit dimly in cobalt-blue, hoods masking all of their lined and wizened faces. One or two of them stooped, leaning on staffs. The air was full of an ancient, musty smell now, like damp old clothes.

  ‘I take it the answer is no?’ he murmured.

  And then he heard their voices, singing together in harmony. He could make out no words, and yet the singing was - bewitching. That was the only word for it. The volume of their harmonies grew, echoing as if in a vault or a church. Deep, dark, inexpressibly beautiful, but somehow raw, the sound reminded Ulverston of the chants of Bulgarian folk-singers or the incantations of Tibetan monks, yet more musical and more intoxicating than either.

  Above them, Xanthë’s voice rang out loud and clear. ‘Hear us, Ull-Verr-Stone. Hear our names. Xanthë. Róisín. Bethan. Martha. Lizabeth. Anne. Kathleen. Yseult. Alice.’

  ‘Delighted, ladies,’ Ulverston murmured. ‘A pity it couldn’t be in more pleasant circumstances.’

  Another of the witches spoke: ‘We have waited, biding our time, skulking for centuries in the darkness of these nowhere-lands.’

  And then another: ‘We have waited, growing weaker and more diseased as the winds of Time cut through our bodies.’

  And then Xanthë again: ‘We searched for a door that would lead us out of this living death; looking for even the most delicate fraying of the fabric. We found none, until now. And now we have found it, we will not wait again.’

  Ulverston’s white hair rippled in a gentle breeze as he stared into the bright, angry eyes of the witch. Eyes which were suddenly terrible, resolute, possibly even mad. Eyes he knew he could not argue with.

  ‘Then it’s over,’ he said softly, ‘and there’s nothing I can do.’

  Shaking his head in despair, Ulverston slipped away from the circle of nine witches as their singing grew in volume, echoing through the endless nothing-space of the Otherworld.

  ‘Emerald!’

  Richie, puffing and panting, abandoned his bike by the gate and scrambled up the field, heading for the woods by the Darkwater. He had caught up with Emerald Greene as she headed for the trees, her backpack on her back, and he wanted to catch her before she slipped through the barrier into Rubicon House.

  ‘Emerald!’ he yelled again, ignoring the muddy puddles he had to splash through.

  Suddenly, Emerald was there in front of him. He almost collided with her as she emerged from behind a tree. Silent as a ghost.

  She looked him up and down, green eyes and sharp and amused behind her blue spectacles. ‘Richard Fanshawe. Have you dragged yourself through a hedge backwards?’

  Richie, doubled up, his breath like fire in his lungs, struggled to speak. There was a tree-stump nearby and he sank gratefully down on to it, easing the pain in his legs.

  ‘How... do you move... so fast?’ he managed eventually.

  ‘I merely keep myself in trim.’ She prodded him in the stomach, almost making him lose his balance. ‘You, on the other hand, should exercise more.’

  Richie pulled a face. If there was one part of school he hated, it had to be Games. ‘I don’t... think...so...’ he said, sitting down on the grass in front of her. ‘You’re going to... have to get yourself... a Blackberry,’ he suggested.

  Emerald made a dismissive noise. ‘Phht. Primitive devices. Might as well use a carrier pigeon.’ She sat down beside him. ‘Well? Did you have any information for me, or did you ride all the way out here merely to discuss methods of communication?’

  Richie unfolded a piece of paper from his pocket.

  It was a printout of a simple sketch done on the computer, showing the positions of the Cathedral in the centre of Meresbury, the Darkwater to its east and the Ten Sisters to the north-east, all linked by the ley lines:

  ‘Yes?’ said Emerald Greene impatiently. ‘And?’

  Richie was becoming a little more animated now that he was getting his breath back. ‘Here, ‘ he said, pointing to the triangle. ‘I knew something rang a bell. I was reading about it only last week.’

  Emerald held the map up to eye level. ‘Enlighten me, Richard,’ she said.

  Richie grinned. ‘You mean I know something you don’t for once?’

  Emerald turned and gave him a cold, green stare. ‘Information is not a competition, Richard. It is a mutually beneficial system of sharing. Expand.’

  Richie put the printout down on the tree-stump and took out a pen. ‘Okay. Look. The triangle thing got me thinking... Come on, Em, you can do geometry. How do you take the exact centre of a triangle?’

  Emerald Greene looked at him steadily for a few seconds, and then to his delight he saw her smiling, her green eyes widening behind the blue glasses. Then she drew back, exhaling a sharp breath, and produced a green felt-tip pen from behind her ear.

  ‘The centre of this line,’ Emerald murmured, estimating where it was and marking it with a cross, ‘and the centre of this one... and the centre of this one.’ Then she drew a line perpendicular to each of the sides of the triangle, and marked a ring around the point where they met:

  ‘Well?’ Richie asked in excitement.

  ‘Excellent, Richard Fanshawe. That shows you are thinking.’

  ‘It does?’

  ‘Yes. Your thoughts have mirrored the exact same ones I had twenty-four hours ago, when I first drew this model for myself.’

  ‘Oh.’ Richie looked crestfallen. ‘You knew.’

  ‘Yes, yes, but do not worry! It shows it is a logical deduction. Any force, whatever form it takes, is strongest when it takes the path of least resistance. What we have discovered here is the exact pattern leading to the nexus point - and all we need to do is plot this on to the map.’

  ‘W
hich I suppose you’ve already done?’ Richie asked gloomily.

  Emerald beamed. ‘Indeed!’ she said delightedly, and pulled out the small-scale Ordnance Survey map of the city, shaking it flat with one deft twist of her hand. ‘Look.’

  Richie looked. Emerald had drawn the same diagram on a transparency, which she had stuck over the map. His eyes followed the green lines, and he saw the ring marking the nexus point.

  He blinked.

  He peered in to look more closely.

  ‘It falls approximately halfway down Templegate Road,’ said Emerald Greene, ‘just outside the centre of Meresbury.’

  ‘Templegate Road?’ said Richie, looking up with a start.

  Emerald stretched out one long finger and jabbed at the map. ‘In fact, the nexus point is located somewhere we know very well.’

  Richie leaned in even further to see exactly where she was pointing. His nose was a matter of millimetres from the map as he struggled to focus.

  He read what was marked on the map.

  After a few seconds, he looked up at Emerald.

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  ‘Em,’ he added.

  ‘Gee,’ he finished.

  And Emerald Greene just smiled.

  At the kitchen sink, Jessica scrubbed the paint from her hands with pumice stone and white spirit, then rinsed them under the hot tap.

  In the corner of the dining-room, the printer chugged away, churning out the information which Emerald had asked her to find. She gazed out across the garden at the lengthening shadows, deep in thought about the witches, the plague and Hexbrook.

  Jess blinked. For a second, she thought she had seen a shadow move out there in the back garden, between the shed and the hydrangea.

  She towelled her hands dry, quickly opened the back door and tiptoed out into the cooling evening air, narrowing her eyes as she scanned the flowerbeds for movement.

  ‘Over here,’ drawled a languid voice. ‘No need to creep around like that.’