The Witch's Guide to Magical Combat Read online

  Beth yelled, “No! His dad might be trying to lure him in!”

  Atacama leapt up and ran towards the rock. “He could ambush Innes and break the curse by defeating him in combat!”

  Molly and Beth followed. They all looked down and saw the long sharp-nosed pike prodding at a horse lying at the bottom of the pool.

  The horse was jerking, kicking feebly at Innes’s fish form.

  “If that’s an ambush,” said Atacama, “it’s not a very effective one.”

  The horse shifted into a man curled on the riverbed. The man moved his arms weakly, then he changed into a pike too, which wriggled off the pebbles and started to rise to the surface, belly-up.

  Suddenly the fish turned to grey stone and sank to the bottom again.

  Now there were two fish visible in the pool. One shining bright as it swam through the water, the other flat and grey on the bottom, like the swimming pike’s dull heavy shadow. The silvery pike circled the stone pike, nosing and nudging.

  Past the ripples in the clear water, Molly could see cracks in the stone fish.

  Innes rose out of the river. He changed to a boy as he broke the surface, then scrambled up the rock.

  “Something’s going horribly wrong!” he gasped. “My dad is ill or injured or something. Did you see? He couldn’t move properly. He couldn’t jump out as a horse, or climb out as a man, or swim properly as a fish. And when he turned back to stone, like I’d cursed him to do, the stone was all fractured and crumbling!” He rubbed his hands over his face. “I must have done something wrong when I cast the curse. Now the rock is breaking and it’s damaging him. He’s dying. I’m killing him!”

  Chapter Three

  “Your dad is still alive.” Molly put her hand on Innes’s shoulder. “We all saw him moving.”

  “But how long will he stay alive? How long has this been happening?” Innes looked anxiously at the water. “I was up here in January and he was fine then. Well, not fine: he was angry, but he was healthy. What have I done? What can I do?”

  Beth said, “There’s only one thing you can do. Lift the curse, now.”

  “Of course. Beth’s answer to everything. ‘Dark magic is bad. Just say no. Lift the curse.’ But it’s not that simple. He was eating fairies, Beth. He was hunting hikers. He’s a monster. I trapped him in the stone to protect my neighbours, which includes you and your family. If I lift the curse without the promise that he won’t hunt near our rivers, we’re all at risk.”

  “Especially you,” said Atacama quietly.

  “Yes. Especially me. He keeps saying he’ll take his revenge as soon as he’s free. If I lift the curse without a promise he won’t hunt near home, I’ll be his next prey.”

  He stared at the grey stone fish in the water. “If I don’t lift it, he’ll fall apart. He’ll die. There must be other ways to stop his irresponsible hunting. Though I can’t think of any, which is why I cast the curse in the first place. But I have to lift the curse soon.” He sighed. “I have to lift it now.”

  “We’ll make sure you don’t suffer for doing the right thing,” said Beth. “We’ll protect you.”

  Innes laughed. “My father is a predator, a carnivore, a hunter. Beth, your personal superpower is talking to trees, Atacama is great at riddles, and Molly can become lots of small, easily squashed creatures. I appreciate your offer of protection, but he could rip you apart on his way to me. Don’t protect me. Protect yourselves. So promise me, if he attacks, you won’t interfere?”

  “No, I won’t promise that,” said Molly. “Don’t be daft, Innes. I’m not going to leave you to face him on your own.”

  “Me neither,” said Atacama. “I may be the riddle master, but I also have teeth and claws.”

  “We’re a team,” said Beth. “When you lift this curse, we’ll be standing right beside you.”

  Innes stared at them all. “I suppose I wouldn’t make a promise like that either.” He nodded. “Right, let’s do this.”

  He stood on the very edge of the rock and spoke clearly: “I, Innes Milne, wish to lift the curse I cast on my father, Fraser Milne, kelpie of the Spey valley. I free him from the rock. I lift the curse.”

  He raised his hands. The water trembled.

  But the fish was still flat on the bottom of the pool.

  Then the fish twitched.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Molly saw the circling black bird fall from the sky.

  It didn’t fall to earth in a controlled dive to catch prey, but in a tumbling wingless plummet. Molly wondered if the bird had died the moment Innes lifted the curse. She wondered if the bird was a curse-hatched.

  ***

  Molly heard a splash, so she stopped searching the horizon for the fallen bird and looked at the river.

  Innes had dived into the pool in human form and was trying to drag his father out.

  At first he was trying to lift a motionless man off the riverbed. Then the man started to grow tentacles and fangs, and Innes swam rapidly backwards. Then the half-formed monster squidged into a large fish. Innes grabbed the pike and swam to the edge of the pool.

  Innes yelled in frustration when the fish turned into a horse and slipped back under.

  He was struggling to haul the horse out of the water, so his friends jumped off the rock onto the riverbank to help. Molly and Beth pulled, Innes and Atacama shoved, and the horse dug his hooves into the riverbed and pushed. Eventually, the grey stallion lay on the bank, breath rattling, ribcage heaving, splits in his dappled skin leaking blood.

  He kicked out at Innes with a front hoof.

  “Back off,” Innes yelled at his friends. “He’s dangerous!”

  But the horse was lying still now, his legs limp on the ground.

  Then the horse shifted into a man.

  A long-limbed heavy-shouldered man, with shaggy greying hair. He had rips in his shirt and trousers, and wounds in the skin underneath. The man glared at them, from one eye black with bruising and one eye oozing yellow pus.

  He sat up slowly.

  Innes stepped forward to help.

  “Don’t touch me!” the man croaked. “Don’t touch me, you curse-casting coward.” He held up his hands, wincing as he tried to straighten fingers that were bent at odd angles. “That rock you’ve trapped me inside is crumbling, and I’m falling apart too. I can feel every crack, every chip breaking off. It’s agony. Your curse is torturing me, Innes.” He coughed. “I will make you pay for that pain!”

  He stood up and lurched towards his son. Molly, Atacama and Beth moved closer, to protect Innes if his father attacked. But Mr Milne stumbled and bent over, spluttering and spitting frothy blood onto the heather.

  “The curse is gone,” said Innes, softly. “I’ve just lifted it.”

  His father looked up. “Do you want me to thank you? You’re the one who made me suffer all those months. I’ll thank you properly once I have my strength back.”

  Mr Milne leant against the rock and ran his fingers through his thick grey hair. “How will I thank you? I might lame you as a horse, so you can’t run. I might rot your teeth as a pike, so you can’t eat. I’ve been dreaming up nightmare curses for you, my darling son.”

  He stood up straight, grunting with the effort. “I don’t want your mother to see me like this, or to talk me out of my rightful revenge. So before I go home, I’ll find someone to heal these wounds, then I’ll hunt for you…”

  Innes’s father limped away.

  “Dad, please, let me explain.” Innes started to follow.

  Beth held him back. “He’s too angry. Leave him alone just now.”

  They watched the injured kelpie struggle across the moorland. Away from Craigvenie, away from his home. Away from his rivers.

  Innes sighed.

  Molly said, “I think I saw a curse-hatched fall over there, when you lifted the curse. But it didn’t look like a crow. Let’s go and check.”

  “Why bother?” said Innes. “I don’t care if it was a crow or a sparrow or a parrot or
a pterodactyl. I’ve lifted the curse, but my dad’s still wounded and still wants revenge… I don’t want to see the corpse of a bird I just killed.”

  Atacama said, “But if the curse-hatched for your curse isn’t a crow, that’s odd. It’s worth investigating.” He bounded off, sniffing and searching the heather, as Beth and Molly ran after him. Innes trudged behind.

  “Here!” The sphinx stood with his head down, his ears pricked, his tail flicking.

  Molly saw the crumpled body of a huge black bird with a vicious hooked beak. When it was flying, she’d thought it was a hawk, or maybe a kite. But this was…

  “An eagle?” said Beth. “A curse-hatched eagle? It can’t be.”

  Atacama grabbed the tip of the bird’s right wing in his jaws, and pulled it gently, to straighten it out.

  On the wing, Molly could see the image of a stone in a river, the breeze on the feathers rippling the water against the rock.

  Atacama dropped the wing. “It’s definitely a curse-hatched.”

  “But curse-hatched are crows,” said Beth. “Always and only ever crows. A crow hatches from a stone egg every time a curse is cast. That crow grows strong on the power of its curse. If the curse is strong enough and lasts long enough, the curse-hatched can shift between crow and human, like Corbie. Then the crow dies when the curse is broken or lifted. That’s what a curse-hatched is, a crow hatched from a stone egg by a curse. Not an eagle.”

  “Yet here it is, in front of us,” said Atacama. “If Corbie wants to continue his mother’s dream of creating an army, birds of prey might be better curse-hatched soldiers for him.”

  “What curse-hatched soldiers?” asked Innes, walking slowly towards them.

  Atacama lifted the black eagle by its neck and dragged it to Innes’s feet.

  Innes stared at the image on the wing. “This is a curse-hatched? I hatched this eagle, with the curse I cast on my father? How? I’m not a strong magic-user. It was just a spur of the moment spell, to stop him chasing and eating our neighbours. How could I do this? And how could I get the curse so wrong that it was wounding him?”

  “He was fine last month, wasn’t he?” asked Molly.

  Innes nodded.

  “Then this is new. His curse becoming stronger and more damaging, and a curse-hatched bird that’s an eagle rather than a crow. Maybe it’s all connected.”

  Beth said, “Your curse has also just become stronger and more damaging, Molly. I wonder what your curse-hatched looks like now?”

  Molly thought of the soft baby bird she’d held last year, with the image of a hare on its wing. Then she looked at the hooked beak of the curse-hatched eagle at her feet. “We need more information before we can work out what’s going on.”

  Beth nodded. “So let’s go and ask Mr Crottel what’s happened to the curse he cast on you.”

  “He might not know,” said Innes. “I’ve no idea what happened to the curse I cast on my dad.”

  Molly sighed. “Beth’s probably right. My curse-caster has made changes to my curse before, so it makes sense to start by asking him.”

  As she turned to head back to Craigvenie, Molly glanced up and saw another large bird of prey, soaring in the air currents above. Then she heard a high yelping cry.

  And she fell over.

  She struggled up onto tiny fragile feet, balanced on long wobbly legs and looked with unfocussed eyes at the shadowy shape above her.

  The black shape became larger and larger, swooping down towards her.

  Molly stumbled on her pathetic legs towards Beth, who was waving her arms at the bird and shouting, “Shoo!”

  The eagle yelped again and soared towards the thin clouds.

  Beth picked Molly up. “This constant shapeshifting into unlikely animals could be very inconvenient. But you are nice and cuddly this time.” She carried Molly towards the narrow burn.

  Molly looked at her bony white legs and realised what she was. She nuzzled at Beth’s arm.

  “Ok!” said Beth. “If you’re sure.”

  Molly leapt down and walked through the heather, lifting her little hooves high. She started to bounce and jump. Not sideways or forwards like she did as a hare, but up and down, on the spot, just for fun.

  Then she danced and bounced all the way to the burn, leapt over it and landed on the other side as a girl.

  “Was I a lamb? Was that eagle trying to eat me as a lamb?”

  “Yes, you were a lamb. No, it probably wasn’t trying to eat you.” Innes jumped over to join her. “If that was your curse-hatched, it needs you to stay alive so it can live on the energy of your curse. And if it wasn’t your curse-hatched, we would have protected you. So you weren’t in any danger. But you were fluffy and cute.” He grinned. “A little frolicking lamb, like the first sign of spring!”

  “I’m glad I’ve cheered you up.”

  “Were you deliberately frolicking? With your curse mutating, and my dad swearing revenge on me, did you actually take time out to frolic?”

  “I couldn’t help it!” said Molly. “With those spindly legs and this tall heather, it was the only possible way to move.”

  Innes raised his eyebrows.

  “Ok. You’re right. But I was a lamb. I had to frolic a little bit!”

  Beth jumped the burn too. “Right, off we go to Mr Crottel’s. And if you’re really polite when you ask about your curse, he might even decide you’ve suffered enough and lift it completely!” She strode cheerfully towards Craigvenie.

  As they followed, Molly said to Innes and Atacama, “Just as well I took that chance to frolic. Because if Mr Crottel lifts my curse today, that might be the last time I ever change shape…”

  Chapter Four

  Molly skirted the constantly renewed piles of dog dirt that had led to her discovering the world of magic and curses last year. She’d shouted at Mr Crottel for throwing his dogs’ mess onto the pavement, and he’d responded by putting a curse on her so she turned into a hare every time she heard a dog.

  Molly opened Mr Crottel’s rusty gate and walked up the garden path, past a pile of mouldering sofa cushions, a box of rusty dog food tins, and a line of outdoor lights stuck in the lumpy lawn. She saw his two dogs looking out of the grimy living-room window. At least if they were inside they couldn’t chase her.

  She glanced over her shoulder to check her friends were visible at the gate, then knocked on the door.

  Mr Crottel opened the door dressed in his stained greeny-grey suit, scratching his stubbly jaw. “Hare-girl! Are you still alive? Your spine hasn’t been snapped by a fast hound yet? What a shame! What do you want this time?”

  “I want to know what you’ve done to my curse.”

  “I haven’t done anything to your curse. And I’m not going to. Lifting a curse would damage my reputation as a dark-magic user. So I’m never going to lift it, however much you beg!”

  “I’m not begging, I’m just asking.”

  “Why?” He scratched his armpit. “Why are you asking now? What’s happened to your curse?” He leant out of the doorway, his drooping face uncomfortably close to Molly. “I have a right to know. It’s my curse. You’re my curse victim. Tell me!”

  Molly shook her head. “If you didn’t change it yourself, you don’t need to know.”

  He grinned. “You don’t like it, whatever it is!” Then he frowned. “But I don’t want someone else interfering in my curse. And now you’re back on my territory, I don’t want someone else ending your punishment by eating you. If anyone is going to end your curse like that, it will be me. So if you won’t tell me what’s going on, I’ll trigger your curse, right now!”

  Mr Crottel waved his hand and the gate slammed shut behind Molly. He stepped onto the path and the front door slammed shut behind him.

  Then Mr Crottel shifted.

  Not fast like Molly shifted, nor smooth like Innes shifted.

  Mr Crottel shook himself apart.

  He shook himself like an animal shaking itself dry. As he shook, his suit
flew off him in ragged strips. So did his skin. The strips of flesh and fabric whirled around him in a blur, obscuring his shape, then reattached themselves, forming fur and ears and paws.

  Mr Crottel became a huge dog.

  A huge green dog.

  His hair was shaggy and matted, the colour of new snot or old bruises. His eyes burnt like gassy blue flames. His stringy drool was eggy yellow. He smelt worse than the dog dirt on the pavement.

  And he was massive.

  He was so tall, he was looking straight into Molly’s face. His drool, dripping to the ground, shrivelled the weeds on the path.

  Atacama called, “He’s a deephound! A faery dog! Be careful!”

  Innes yelled, “Back off, Molly!”

  Beth shouted, “We’ll get you out.”

  Molly heard rattling and clanging, as her friends tried to force the gate open. She moved slowly towards them, but she didn’t turn her back on the massive Crottel-dog. He grinned at her, his heavy snout wrinkled, then he growled: a fierce happy drumroll of a growl.

  Molly changed into a hare.

  She stood still, exactly where she’d shifted, staring at the beast towering over her.

  The dog took one slow step towards her.

  Molly knew she should run. But where? The last time Mr Crottel had set his dogs on her, she’d discovered there was no simple way out of this garden.

  The Crottel-dog snarled and lifted his upper lip. He had very long, very sharp, nastily stained teeth.

  Molly shivered. Was this how it was going to end? Mr Crottel was the witch who’d cursed her. Was he also the dog who would catch and kill her?

  She wouldn’t make it easy for him.

  Molly started to run. She wasn’t running towards safety, because there wasn’t any safety in this garden. But she couldn’t stay still while this dog bared fangs as long as her back legs.

  He thundered after her, shaking the ground under her and huffing hot stinky breath above her.

  She leapt round damp boxes, through scrawny roses and over weed-filled flowerbeds. But she was never out of the dog’s sight long enough to hide amongst all the rubbish. She just had to keep moving.