The Bag of Bones (2 page)

Ms. Scurrilous heaved a romantic sigh. “So sad. Her daughter ran away, and there’s only a grandson. And of course we don’t have kings in Wadingburn, so it’s been a terrible worry.”

“Serves the old bag right,” Truda snapped.

“Excuse
me,
Mrs. Hangnail!” Evangeline’s voice rose several octaves. “You are speaking of our beloved monarch!”

“Oooh — beg your pardon, I’m sure.” The old witch bobbed a sarcastic curtsy. “So what else do you do, besides visiting royalty?”

Mrs. Vibble bridled. “We offer charms and soothing cures for the afflicted.”

“That’s right,” Ms. Scurrilous added. “And we get paid for our work without frightening anyone.”

“YAH!” Truda stuck out her long green tongue. “Mimsy-whimsy sort of stuff. Cough drops and love potions as well, I’ll be bound.” She hobbled toward the bubbling cauldron and peered inside. “Just as I thought. Moldy mushrooms, shriveled spiders’ legs, chicken soup, and nail clippings. Call yourselves witches? Spineless old hags is what you are! Now, let me see . . .” She began to fish in the pockets of her shabby old cloak, then pulled out a tattered cloth bag. “Frog bones, bat bones, rat bones, cat bones . . . How about a few dragon bones to begin with? Nicely ground into dust, of course.”

Mrs. Prag grabbed Evangeline’s arm. “What’s she doing?” she hissed. “Stop her! Dragon bones are illegal!”

Evangeline swallowed hard. As Grand High Witch of Wadingburn, voted into the post by every witch in the kingdom, she knew she should take command. She should order this terrible old hag to go, scat, vamoose, and refuse to take no for an answer. But there had been something in Truda Hangnail’s eyes that was making Evangeline feel oddly indecisive.

“Erm . . .” she began. “We don’t usually use those kinds of ingredients.”

“You don’t, eh?” Truda sneered. “Well, could be it’s time you did. I’m thinking we could have some fun and games in this cozy little kingdom of yours. I’m thinking we could make it a tad more exciting. Could just be I’ve found something worth staying for!” She gave an evil cackle, opened the bag, and tossed a handful of gray dust into the cauldron.

Nothing happened.

Truda swore and gave the cauldron a sharp kick.

At once there was a flash, and a cloud of thick purple smoke rose up and swirled around Truda’s shoulders before spreading across the clearing. The witches of Wadingburn coughed and spluttered, and Evangeline felt her eyes sting and water. Strange thoughts raced into her mind; she remembered how only that morning the butcher’s boy had accidentally ridden across a corner of her flower bed, and she was suddenly seized with a burning desire to raise a huge red boil on the end of his nose.

“Do it! Do it!” Truda Hangnail was standing right in front of her. “Let the evil do its work! Let wickedness rule! You call yourself a Grand High Witch — so make folk suffer! Take the power and follow me!”

Evangeline swallowed. On the other side of the cauldron, Mrs. Prag and Mrs. Vibble had linked arms and were muttering curses. Mrs. Cringe and Ms. Scurrilous were scowling terrible scowls and making threatening gestures as they stamped up and down.

Truda pointed a withered finger at Mrs. Cringe. “Granddaughter of mine,” she intoned, “you brought me here. Come to the cauldron and take the power of the Deep Magic . . . you and all who are in this place. Let the Deep Magic return to Wadingburn . . . Deep, Deep,
Deep
Magic!” And she strode to the seething cauldron and held out her bony hand. Mrs. Cringe, moving like a sleepwalker, drifted inexorably toward the hand and took it. Ms. Scurrilous followed and was grasped by Mrs. Cringe. Mrs. Prag and Mrs. Vibble, hand in hand like schoolgirls, joined themselves to the chain, and the Grand High Witch felt an acute longing to join them. Her head was swirling with wicked thoughts and the desire for power, but there was still a part of her that knew this was not her true self, that this was the wish of Truda Hangnail.

“Don’t go! Oh, Auntie Levangeline, don’t go handling hold!”

The small squeaky voice cut through the confusion in Evangeline’s mind, and she stopped. Loobly was dancing up and down in agitation, still clutching the rat. “Smell badness,” she shrilled. “
Bad
badness, Auntie! Loobly knows it is!”

With a last desperate effort, Evangeline, Grand High Witch of Wadingburn, spoke as her real self. “Loobly!” She gasped. “Loobly . . . go to the crones . . . the Ancient Crones . . .” and then she was sucked into the purple mist.

Gracie Gillypot sat up in bed with a start. Someone or something was in her room, and it was scratching on the walls.

“Is — is anyone there?” Gracie asked, hoping her voice wasn’t trembling. It wasn’t that she was nervous, she told herself, it was more that she wasn’t quite sure what was happening. The House of the Ancient Crones had a curious habit of swapping parts of itself every so often, so that the front door would suddenly pop up on the roof, or on a side wall, or even in the cellar. Gracie had lost her bedroom two or three times since she had moved in, but fortunately there was a sign on the door saying
HEDGEHOGS ONLY,
so she had been able to track it down among the many other doors that played hide-and-seek up and down the corridors. The kitchen was particularly inclined to slide from one end of the building to the other; only room seventeen remained more or less in the same place. This was fortunate, as it was the room where the crones kept their two old-fashioned but all-important looms. On one they created fine pieces of cloth that were made into robes of skulls, or cloaks of invisibility, or whatever else might be ordered (and paid for at a quite exorbitant rate; “We are not,” the Ancient One frequently remarked, “a charity.”). Shimmering on the taller loom was the silver web that held the balance between Good and Evil, and here work never stopped. Day and night alike the Youngest, the Oldest, or the Ancient One sat steadily weaving. Gracie had offered to help and had been allowed a couple of minutes now and then, but never longer. The Newest was forbidden to touch the fragile silver threads at all; she was in the process of being trained in the ways of the Ancient Crones and was, as yet, highly unreliable.

“It’ll be a good few years before she’s properly drained of evil,” the Youngest had told Gracie when the Newest first arrived. “Took me long enough, and I wasn’t anything like such a Falseheart as her. She’s the worst the Ancient One’s ever taken on.” Then suddenly remembering that the Newest was Gracie’s stepsister, the Youngest looked awkward. “That is, I’m sure she had moments of being nice. . . .”

“She didn’t,” Gracie said with feeling. “It’s OK, Auntie Val. She was
dreadful
.” And the conversation had been dropped, and the Youngest went back to her weaving.

The scratching continued.

Gracie felt on her bedside table for the matches and, after a couple of attempts, finally managed to light her candle. Holding it high, she peered around the room . . . and saw a quill pen spattering ink in all directions as it wrote furiously on the whitewashed walls.

“Oh,” Gracie said with relief. “It’s only you.”

The pen paused momentarily, then started off again.

Gracie yawned. “Couldn’t you do that in the morning? Is it really important?”

The pen shot across the room, wrote
YES YES YES
! on the wall above her head, then zoomed back to continue its scrawl. Gracie sighed and swung her legs over the edge of her bed. Only the week before, the pen had spent a whole afternoon drawing big fat hearts on her ceiling together with a banner inscribed
GRACIE LOVES MARCUS
. Gracie hadn’t been pleased, partly because this was a very private matter, and partly because it had taken her a whole morning to wash it off.

“What is it now?” She picked up the candle, and walked over to read what the pen had written.

“
DANGER HELP HELP DANGER,
” she read. “
GO GO GO
 . . .” And then the same again, over and over.

“Please —” Gracie was always polite, even to a quill pen that had woken her at midnight. “Please . . . couldn’t you give me a bit more information?”

The pen spluttered, wrote
URGENT!
and shot off under the door. Gracie looked after it in resigned exasperation.

“I’d better go and ask one of the aunties,” she decided, pulling on her bathrobe. “And maybe I’ll make myself a cup of tea at the same time.”

She opened her bedroom door, stepped out into the corridor, and set off for the kitchen. A second later she found herself facing the front door, which opened itself invitingly, letting in a great deal of cold night air.

“No, thanks,” Gracie said. “I’m going to have a cup of tea and a chat with whoever’s on the loom.” She turned around and set off in the other direction. The House gave a convulsive shake, and yet again she was looking through the open door at the dark night outside.

Gracie folded her arms. “Look,” she said. “I get the message. I know you want me to go — but I’m still in my pajamas, it’s the middle of the night, and I want to talk to Auntie Edna or Auntie Elsie. If I promise I’ll leave right afterward, will you let me go and find them?”

There was a curious heaving along the floorboards, and the House settled down.

“Thank you.” Gracie took a deep breath, turned around yet again, and hurried along the corridor until she found the door marked
WATER WINGS
. Once inside, she sighed with relief as she found the kitchen exactly the same as it always was and went about the business of boiling a kettle and making tea for two.

“Three,” said a voice from a cupboard.

“OK, Gubble,” Gracie said cheerfully. “Tea for three.” She filled the teapot, poured out a cupful, and added milk and four sugars.

“Five?” The voice was hopeful.

Gracie shook her head. “Not good for you.” Leaving the cup on the table, she put the other two cups on a tray and made her way to room seventeen, where the Oldest was steadily weaving. The second loom was neatly packed up for the night; a length of sky-blue velvet lay on it, and Gracie smoothed it lovingly as she walked past.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” said the Oldest as she pushed her wig of bright red curls farther back on her head. “Shame it’s for Princess Nina-Rose; it’d suit you nicely. Just the thing for a pretty girl at her first ball. Although I don’t know why Queen Bluebell’s calling it a Declaration Ball, exactly, seeing as her daughter ran away years ago.”

Gracie smiled, trying hard not to look as if she were sorry for herself. “I told you, Auntie Elsie. Queen Bluebell’s not going to ask me. The ball’s this coming Saturday, and I haven’t had an invitation. I’ve brought you some tea.”

“That’s very nice of you, dear,” Elsie said, and she patted Gracie’s hand. “Shouldn’t you be in bed, though?”

“I was.” Gracie busied herself with the cups. “But . . . but the quill’s been writing things all over my walls. I came to ask you about it. It wrote
DANGER
, and
HELP
, and
URGENT
! — and the House is desperate for me to go somewhere, but I don’t know where. What do you think?”

The Oldest didn’t answer. She had turned back to the loom and was staring at the fine cloth in front of her.

Gracie, peering over her shoulder, saw a dark purple stain spreading across the silver. “What’s that?” she asked.

“That,” said the Oldest grimly, “is Trouble.”

“Oh.” Gracie rubbed her nose thoughtfully. “What sort of trouble?”

The Oldest Crone looked again at the stain. “Magic, I’d say. And Deep Magic at that. The very nastiest sort of magic. Oh, dearie, dearie me. That’s dreadful. I wonder where it could be coming from?”

“That must have been what the quill was writing about.” Gracie was conscious of a cold chill creeping into her stomach. “No wonder the House is so upset.” She swallowed hard. “It really,
really
wants me to go . . . and if I leave now, I could be in the Five Kingdoms by midday. It’s market day in Gorebreath, so if anything odd’s been happening, somebody there’s sure to know.” She didn’t add that her stomach was now feeling as if it were full of whirling butterflies and that she wouldn’t have the faintest idea what to do if she met up with any Deep Magic. Neither had she any idea how to recognize it if she
did
meet it. “And then . . . then I suppose I could come back here to tell you?”