25 YEARS AGO…Leisureland – Galway, Ireland
Awitch squatted over the entrance of the ghost train, a long talon beckoning unsuspecting children into her lair. She had mushy-pea-green skin and a hooked nose with a wart on the end. She wore a pointed hat and had stringy black hair.
Niamh Kelly felt sorry for her.
It was the second week of the summer holidays and September was unthinkable. For redheads Niamh and Ciara, it was a turquoise sky, Factor 50 sort of day. A dance remix of ‘The Boy Is Mine’ pounded from the Crazy Mouse and the air was nigh sticky with candyfloss and toffee apples.
But where was their dad? Niamh couldn’t keep the hot yellows of panic out of her aura. It made little sense. He’d told them he’d wait while they both paid a visit to the toilets, but when they’d emerged, he was nowhere to be seen. They had nothing to fear here, she reminded herself; they’d been coming to Leisureland their whole lives – it was in Salthill, only twenty minutes from their home in Galway.
‘He can’t’ve gone far,’ Ciara snapped, belying her own anxiety. She took her sister’s hand. ‘Come on. We’ll go wait by the ticket office.’
‘Maybe he went into the men’s toilets?’ Niamh said. ‘We should stay here.’
Ciara tugged on Niamh’s arm. ‘No. He said if we ever got lost, to go to the exit.’
The girls passed under the swing chairs as they swooped and dipped overhead. They’d tuned out the joyful screams and laughter. A funfair is a mighty noisy spot for a sentient; a cacophony of nervousness, bravado, much-too-late second thoughts at the top of the Big Dipper. The wee psychics had never consciously learned to phase out such background din, it was as natural to them as exhaling.
‘When did he say that?’ Niamh grumbled.
‘Years ago, when we were little.’
They were still little, but less little than then. ‘He never said that today.’
Timid sparrowgirl Niamh would be the death of her. ‘Niamh, don’t be a baby.’
‘Can I help you girls? Are yous lost?’
The twins turned to see a smartly dressed woman looming over them, silhouetted before the bright sun. Older than their mother – so old—she wore a trench coat and a woollen beret in the same shade of Barbie cerise, even in the sweltering July heat. ‘You girls need help?’ She spoke with a local accent. Her lipstick was fuchsia pink and there were waxy flecks of it on her sharp, uneven teeth.
‘We can’t find our dad,’ Ciara said.
Ciara! She could be anyone.
‘Good golly, Niamh Kelly,’ the woman said. ‘You don’t have to worry about me.’
It took both girls a second to realise she had overheard a message meant only for Ciara.
‘How do you know my name?’ Niamh asked. All around them, children ran between the rides, their parents keeping them in check. Any
one of these mums or dads could help them. Niamh told herself they were quite safe.
‘How do you think?’ the woman gave them a theatrical wink. She had a big nose; Niamh tried not to stare.
You’re a witch, Ciara said.
‘I am,’ the woman said aloud. ‘I met your mammy once on Inishmaan before you two were even born.’ She smiled again, and there was something familiar about her. ‘I told her all about you twos.’
‘Can you help us find our da?’ Niamh asked.
‘I certainly can. Come with me,’ the woman said.
Ciara gave a shrug and followed after her as she made her way along the gangplanks between the rides and stalls. Their mam had always said they should find a kind woman to help them if there was ever an emergency. Niamh wondered if she was from the little local coven, though the thought didn’t quite sit right. Being adepts, all the Galway witches had fussed over the twins since they were toddlers, yet they’d never met this woman.
Ciara, wait.
Her sister stopped.
‘Girls, come along now. He’s waiting for you.’
‘Dad?’ Ciara said.
‘That’s right. Just this way. I’ll take you to him.’
Who is she? Niamh asked Ciara.
I can’t read her, Ciara replied. They stood together, shoulder to shoulder, concentrating.
The witch looked back, her expression hardening. ‘Now, girls, it’s very impolite to go snoopin’ inside someone’s mind without
permission,’ she said sharply. Her nails were long and filed to a point, the same searing pink as her lips. ‘We’ll have to teach you some manners.’
‘Who are you? What’s your name?’ Ciara said. ‘We shouldn’t talk to strangers.’
‘But you know me already…’
The twins were so good at muting the noise of mundane life, they were slow to realise Leisureland had fallen quiet. The swing chairs hung diagonally in mid-air. The Big Dipper was suspended upside-down in the centre of the loop. A clown blew giant bubbles which waited, frozen, between gleeful statue children.
‘How did you do that?’ Niamh asked. She’d never seen anything like this.
‘I can do whatever I want, I’m a god,’ the woman said. ‘Now stop asking questions and come with me, you precocious little bitches.’
She grabbed a wrist in each hand and hauled the twins towards the park exit. They dug their heels in, but she was stronger than she looked.
Niamh and Ciara Kelly had always known this day would come. They had used their considerable gifts to heal, to speak, to learn. Now they would have to use them to fight. The twins didn’t need to communicate. They’d thought about this moment often.
Niamh twisted her bones; Ciara pushed as hard as she could.
The woman didn’t budge, but she did let go of them. The girls grasped each other and ran for the waltzers. ‘You foul cunts, that hurt!’
Ciara and Niamh held hands and used a trick they’d used since they were five or six. They called it No. They wrapped a barrier around themselves. At home, it worked well at stopping Mam or Dad manhandling them towards the bath.
The woman came up against their shield and stopped. ‘Let me in.’
‘Fuck off,’ Ciara said.
Niamh looked to her. Oh, Ciara’d be in trouble if she
told Mam she’d said that word.
‘Come with me now and I’ll make it painless,’ the woman said. Her voice was deep now, deeper than any man’s. Her skin turned a mottled olive green, and lank raven hair poured over her shoulder and back. Warts bubbled and burst across her hooked nose.
Neither Kelly girl said a word.
‘One day I shall be whole once more, and you’ll wish you’d taken a quick death here today. You have no idea of the horrors to come; the torment you’ll deliver unto each other.’ Her haggish cackle drilled through their skulls. ‘Bye for now!’
The girls flinched as the waltzers clattered past them, the Tamperer featuring Maya blaring from the sound system. What is she going to look like with a chimney on her head?
Brendan Kelly hurried over, concern creasing his face. ‘Girls! What did I tell you about wandering off? You want to give me a heart attack?’
The twins looked to him blankly. They couldn’t recall how they’d come to be by the waltzers when they’d only just stepped out of the toilets. They apologised sheepishly. The magenta woman was nowhere to be seen.
Neither Ciara nor Niamh would remember a single second of the exchange.
125 YEARS LATER…Theo – Hebden Bridge, UK
‘Who are you? Really?’ Theo asked the boy she had previously known to be Milo Pearson. Now, she wasn’t so sure.
Behind his face, there was another, and another, and another, and she recognised none of them. Men, women, children. She’d never known an aura like it. She couldn’t read him anymore, his mind a mirror in which she could see only herself.
Together, they walked the nature hike through Hardcastle Crags. It was late, and cold, bitterly so. The dark was very close, and she could scarcely see where he was leading her.
‘I’m Milo.’
Theo stopped walking. ‘You’re not. How are you doing this?’
He turned to her, his eyes glinting like mercury in what sparse moonlight found its way through the canopy. ‘Do you want to see Niamh again, or not?’ He didn’t even sound like Milo any longer, his voice older than the valley. ‘Follow me. We’re close.’
Theo could have found her way to Bluebell Meadow alone in the dark. Even after all this time, she still felt Niamh; something like a mournful hymnal amongst the trees. The night was oddly silent; no owls; no badgers. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath in anticipation.
‘Can you feel her?’ the boy who looked like Milo asked. ‘She’s still here. Just.’
Theo wrapped her arms around herself like a shield. ‘So what?’
‘Don’t be coy, Theodora. You know why we’re here.’
‘You’re wrong,’ she said defiantly. ‘I won’t. I can’t.’
With dancerly, fluid movements, Milo took her hands in his and squeezed them tight. ‘It’s time you understood your part in all this. You aren’t like other witches.’
Theo laughed, half-embarrassed, half-sarcastic. You’re not like Other Girls was the reddest red flag.
‘You know this,’ Milo said, stating facts. ‘You have untold power. This is what you were made for. You are a tiger, not a sheep, so stop dressing like one. It doesn’t suit you.’
Theo tried to focus, to ignore the strange watchfulness of the night forest. What did he mean? She knew nothing of her childhood, of her parentage. She couldn’t resist the question. ‘What do you know about me?’
Milo smiled. He strode away, deeper and deeper into the woods. ‘So. Story-time. Once upon a time, the witches tried to kill us, but they failed. They split us, and since that day they spoke of one who would reunite us.’
‘The Sullied Child.’ Theo was more than familiar, thanks, but this only confirmed her worst fears. ‘Is it me?’
Even in the darkness, his teeth gleamed, great white shark. ‘All in good time. There’s work to do.’
won’t. It’s forbidden! It’s unnatural.’
Annoyance flared in Milo’s eyes. ‘Idiot. You are a witch. You are nature herself.’
She shook her head.
He tried a more caramel tone. ‘Don’t you want her back? She was taken from you on the whim of a mad woman. Everyone you have ever loved was stolen from you, Theo. It doesn’t quite seem fair.’
She fell into step alongside him and looked into his eyes. For the first time she entertained the notion. ‘But what if…what if she comes back…wrong?’
He shrugged off her concerns. ‘Piffle. Old wives’ tales. It’s well within your grasp.’
Necromancy. The unspoken art. So taboo, it was impossible to know what might happen because no one dared leave evidence of their handiwork. But Theo knew, without question, that she would rather have no Niamh at all than a lumbering zombie. The physical body had been in this grave for weeks. The real Niamh, her soul, well that was what hurt Theo’s heart. The notion that Niamh’s sentience was here, amongst the snowdrops and holly, seeing all this unfold, was too much to bear.
The trees thinned as they reached the privacy of Niamh’s glade. They waded through brittle, waist-high brambles, until Theo stood roughly where she was buried, a smooth pebble the only clue to her final resting place. It was engraved with a CK for Ciara Kelly, the woman who had killed her twin and stolen her body. ‘This wasn’t even her body,’ Theo said. ‘It’s Ciara’s.’
This detail didn’t seem to trouble her guide. ‘Technicalities. With both Ciara and Niamh on the physical plane, the soul transfer will become perilously weak. They will revert within moments. Nature will right itself.’
That made sense. Whatever dark spell Ciara had used to commandeer her sister’s body was grossly unnatural – there’s a lid for every pot, and Ciara had switched lids. Perhaps this was justice.
All this was moot, though, because such magic was far beyond Theo.
‘Here,’ Milo said, and The Song of Osiris floated from his position to hers. ‘This was meant for you.’
‘I don’t know how,’ Theo said, exasperated, hoping he didn’t think that admission was her agreeing to this.
‘Let the book show you how, and let love guide your hand.’ He opened his palms, some sort of pacifying motion. ‘You did love her. You can bring her back.’
Theo looked from the book that hovered before her, to the grave. ‘Where is she?’
‘The between space,’ Milo said. ‘When the physical body perishes, the soul lingers just outside of our reality.’
‘And then where?’
‘And then nowhere. Nowhere at all. Would you like me to tell you Gaia created some celestial members’ area? This is all there is, all there ever was. This is Gaia’s creation, and the rest is a fiction. You get one chance, and Niamh’s was taken from her. Unless you save her.’
Theo turned her attention to The Song of Osiris, and it opened itself, the pages flicking of their own accord. The bible-thin paper was covered in red, scrawled script. She had tried to read it, but it made scant sense.
‘I don’t want to,’ Theo sobbed, hot, frustrated tears on her cheeks.
‘Why are you lying?’
And she was. She did want Niamh back, more than anything. More than she’d even wanted to become a girl.
‘Let it in,’ Milo told her.
Theo trained her sentience on the book and found it did seem to speak. Lots of voices were contained in the pages, all whispering over
each other at once. She couldn’t focus on a single message. Stop, she told it, I can’t hear you.
The chatter ceased for a second and then the red ink – blood – lifted from the pages and into the night air. It formed a swirling mist of scarlet tendrils that lingered a moment before swimming towards Theo. She felt the entity, the song, reaching out for her with inquisitive whiskers. With her mind, Theo made contact, trying to understand its message.
The red mist slithered over her lips, into her eyes and ears.
And just like that it all made sense. Suddenly, Theo knew precisely how to bring Niamh’s soul out of the realm of shadows, and into Ciara’s corpse below. Milo smiled ever so slightly, stoically triumphant.
The power locked in Hardcastle Crags lifted Theo off her feet. She stabilised herself a metre or so off the earth, feeling a tsunami of radiance ripple through her. She’d never felt anything like it, well, at least not since that night on the bank of the beck. Her hair whipped around her face, getting caught in her mouth.
This was the first step. She needed this much power. She drank in the vitality of the forest. It was soul nectar, and she lapped it up.
The power was for her sentience. She needed to feel far beyond Hebden Bridge. She needed to feel more than just the living; she needed to feel the dead.
Suddenly, it was as if she held one of those blacklights up against reality. Now there wasn’t just the tell-tale signature of life, there was more. A new layer of vision. She was joined by four, maybe five phosphorus, shifting spirits: cloudlike wraiths. Hardly tangible, obliquely humanoid, they were little more than wisps on the air, drifting aimlessly through the woods.
Souls. Souls or ghosts? Ghosts. She was seeing ghosts.
They were everywhere; in the trees, drifting across the meadow. Some of them were more indistinct than others, like they were fading away.
Theo swallowed hard. This was where the dead went.
Can they feel anything? she asked Milo.
Nothing on Earth, he told her.
It didn’t take her long to find Niamh in the crowd. The shape looked nothing like her, but it felt exactly like her. Theo felt the kindness, her sloping thoughts, her quick humour. It was her. She also found she could manipulate this strange matter as she would anything corporeal. She seized hold of Niamh’s essence, because it definitely wasn’t the same as her radiance, and directed the energy towards the grave.
It takes more than that, Milo told her. If it was that simple, we’d all do it.
Before her, a slender, needle-like dagger emerged from the now empty pages of The Song of Osiris.
You know what you have to do. Remember the sacrifice she once made for you.
Oh. Of course there’s a catch. Isn’t there always?
A life for a life. It seemed fair. Although it felt a lifetime ago, a few chaotic months ago, in these very woods, Niamh had offered herself to Theo entirely. She wouldn’t exist, least of all in her current form, without her. Now it was time to repay her. Maybe, Theo thought, this was always foreseen by Gaia. The reason for things. This was why Niamh had so flippantly offered her a home that day in Manchester.
But didn’t he just say you’re the Sullied Child? Doesn’t he need you yet? This voice of reason was drowned out by the myriad of otherworldly voices still swirling through her skull.
Theo joined in with them. Her lips moved, uttering some strange language she’d never heard before. The sounds were hardly human, noises unlike anything she’d heard, raking at the back of her throat. Her eyes were wide and black like obsidian.
She took hold of the hilt of the dagger and ran the blade along her pale forearm diagonally. She screamed in pain, although could
barely hear herself over the ringing in her ears.
Blood sprayed from the wound, forming the same nebulous, shifting cloud that had emanated from the book. It gathered over the burial site a moment, before spiralling downwards and into the earth.
The pain in her arm subsided, but Theo weakened at once. She felt the tug of the grave, thirstily gulping up her offering. It wasn’t just her blood it was draining; it was her radiance. The skeletal remains below needed something, something living.
Theo’s head lolled forwards, and the ground came up at her fast. Still Niamh suckled on her. It was like a magnet, pulling her down, down, down, and there was nothing she could do to stop it now she’d started. She felt her knees connect painfully with the earth, and she bowed to the grave.
The cool dirt felt good on her face. Her vision went grey and gritty, all TV static for a moment, until blackness swung in like finale curtains. ...
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