Beginner's Guide to Curses (Kelpies) Read online

  Molly asked, “So do you wish he had eaten a human birthday party instead of a fairy birthday party?”

  Innes bit his lip. “Yes. I do. But most of all, I wish he hadn’t eaten any birthday parties at all.”

  Chapter 12

  When they got to the classroom, Molly opened the cupboard marked: Curse-lifting workshop supplies. She searched the shelves for more questionnaires.

  The bottom shelf was filled with a heap of shiny chains, the next shelf up was covered in jam jars of pens and pencils, which Molly raided for a fresh pen, and the shelf at her eye-level was stacked with rolled-up parchment scrolls. But on the top shelf, she saw a whole pile of the curse questionnaires.

  “In case Mrs Sharpe wants us to hand the homework in, as well as telling her about it.” She put one questionnaire in front of the toad. “Do you want help filling it in?”

  But the toad just squatted in the middle of the paper and stayed silent.

  So Molly sat at a desk in the corner and wrote down the one-word answers that summarised her interview with Mr Crottel.

  No, no and no.

  It didn’t look very positive.

  But she did write Yes under one question: Do you deserve to be free of this curse?

  Then she said, “Innes, I know you think your dad deserved to be cursed, but you have written down that you deserve to be free of it, haven’t you?”

  Innes held his sheet out to her and she saw a firm dark YES under the eleventh question.

  Molly looked at the toad. “I wonder what you did to be cursed. Did you do something awful, or daft, or brave, or is your curse someone else’s fault entirely? You can’t tell us any of that, but you can tell us if you think you deserve to be free of your curse.”

  The toad croaked once, loudly and firmly.

  Molly nodded. “So, we can all answer that last question for Mrs Sharpe.”

  Then they sat quietly at their desks, with their homework in front of them, looking up at the clock above the blackboard. As the hands clicked round to 7 p.m., Mrs Sharpe opened the door.

  “You harvested that field wonderfully fast. I wonder how many tatties you’ll howk tomorrow? Perhaps not quite so many, if you don’t get any sleep tonight… How did you get on with your homework?”

  Everyone started to talk at once.

  Beth said, “That witch’s curse destroys so many trees and…”

  Atacama said, “I still don’t know who cast…”

  The toad croaked.

  Innes said, “My father finally admitted…”

  Molly said, “I think Mr Crottel wants me to die as a hare…”

  Mrs Sharpe held her hands up. “Shhhh. Perhaps I should read the answers rather than hear them.” She walked round the desks, picking up the homework sheets. “What neat handwriting, Innes. Molly, how nice of you to do Beth’s sheet as well. And Innes scribed for Atacama. It’s lovely to see you all getting along so well!” She folded the sheets and dropped them in her apron pocket. “Now, your next task—”

  “But don’t you want to read our homework right now?” asked Innes.

  “The answers were for you, not for me. You must all understand your own curses. I’ll glance at these tonight, over a mug of hogweed tea. But now, I have another task for you: a curse to consider.”

  “One of our curses?” asked Beth.

  “No, a different curse. I’ll give you the same information about this curse as you’ve discovered about your own curses, then you can consider whether it’s possible for you to lift this old curse. I also want you to consider the consequences of lifting a curse and whether it is wise to lift every single curse. Then I want you to get out there into the night, as a team, and do what you think is best.”

  She opened the cupboard Molly had just been looking in, pulled out one of the scrolls, unrolled the top and peered at it, then nodded. She laid the scroll on the desk at the front. “Tonight’s homework. There’s a hot meal in the bunkhouse, and you can pop into the shop after breakfast tomorrow to let me know how you got on.”

  She smiled at them and left the barn, the door banging gently behind her.

  Molly looked at the clock on the wall. “That was two minutes. She was in here for two minutes. Can she really teach us how to lift our curses in two minutes a day? She didn’t even seem that interested in all the homework we did. I thought she’d be a bit more hands-on.”

  “I didn’t,” muttered Beth. “Witches do as little as possible. Enchanted brooms to clean the house. Eternal fire to cook the food. Cursed children to howk the tatties. Of course we have to learn about curses all on our own…”

  Innes said, “Don’t be so negative. She’s getting us to do practical tasks, rather than just copying down notes.”

  Atacama said in his purring calming voice. “Shall we read about our next task first or eat the meal first?”

  “Both at the same time,” said Innes, seizing the scroll and pushing open the door. “Come on, quickly, let’s get a move on.”

  Beth sighed. “He was less tiring when he was in a bad mood.”

  ***

  Molly ladled out bean stew while Innes cut thick slices of bread. Atacama and Beth bent their black and purple heads over the scroll, moving the toad down the parchment as they examined each question and answer.

  “It’s a cursed wyrm,” said Beth. “Trapped inside the hill at Cut Rigg Farm, southeast of here, towards the mountains. The wyrm accidentally destroyed the farmhouse and barn. It coiled round the farm buildings one night, squeezed its coils as it slept and knocked down the walls.”

  “A worm?” asked Molly. “A worm big enough to knock down a wall?”

  “Not an earthworm,” said Innes, wiggling his forefinger. “A wyrm – W-Y-R-M – a serpent. A great long strong serpent, with a few frills and a bit of a brain. They usually keep away from towns, villages and farms.”

  “So, did the farmer curse this… wyrm?”

  “Yes,” said Beth. “Decades ago. When it was cursed, it sank into the earth, and it will stay there, coiled up asleep round the ruins, until someone lifts the curse.”

  “And is that someone us?” asked Molly. “Do we really want to set a big serpent free?”

  “Let’s find out if it’s possible to set it free first,” said Innes.

  “The wyrm will awaken,” said Atacama, reading from the scroll, “when the farm is rebuilt in one night, just as it was destroyed in one night. If the wyrm uncoils itself and moves off the farm’s land without knocking down one stone of the building, the curse will be lifted and the wyrm will be free.”

  “So,” said Innes, cutting more bread and putting it beside the toad, “we have to rebuild a farm tonight.”

  “But do we?” asked Molly. “Mrs Sharpe said this was about deciding whether it’s wise to lift a curse, not just barging ahead and lifting it anyway. Does it say whether the curse is deserved?”

  Beth pushed the parchment towards Molly.

  Molly looked at the answers under the familiar questions. “It says the curse was possibly a little out of proportion, because the farmhouse was newly inherited and the owner was very fond of it.” She frowned. “But this doesn’t have the ‘deserve to be free’ question. And there isn’t a question about the consequences of lifting the curse. We didn’t have to think about the consequences of lifting our own curses either. But maybe that’s a question we should ask. What would happen if we let a wyrm loose in Speyside? Are wyrms dangerous? What do they eat? Might it attack us when we wake it up?”

  “Wyrms mostly eat cattle and sheep, but they digest slowly so they don’t eat that often,” said Innes, dipping a crust in his stew. “I’m sure we’ll be safe while it’s cold and groggy from waking up.”

  Beth added, “It won’t stay round here long anyway, once it realises the witch who cursed it still lives nearby.”

  “Where?” asked Molly.

  “Look at the name on the sheet.”

  Molly looked at the answer to the very first question. “Oh. Aggie Sharp
e. It was Mrs Sharpe who cursed the wyrm? That was her farm? She wants us to lift her own curse?”

  “Looks like it,” said Innes, “so let’s get on with it.”

  Molly sighed. She wasn’t sure they’d done what Mrs Sharpe asked and really considered the consequences of lifting this curse. She looked round the table. Innes was eating his second bowl of stew, the toad was squatting on its slice of bread, Beth was filling glasses of water for everyone, Atacama was nibbling a bit of red pepper. Everyone looked calm and unafraid. They knew far more about the world of magic and spells and curses, the world that contained wyrms, than Molly did. If they didn’t think freeing a giant serpent was a problem, maybe it wasn’t.

  Molly was the stranger here, the one who didn’t fit in, and she didn’t want to ask any more awkward questions. And surely Mrs Sharpe wouldn’t have given them this task if it was dangerous.

  She shrugged. “Alright, let’s build a farm.”

  Atacama said, “Building a farmhouse and outbuildings in one night won’t be as easy as digging tatties.”

  “I can manage any woodwork,” said Beth.

  Innes said, “I can do stonework, in my horse self. Humans used to capture and bridle kelpies to force them to work at building or hauling or ploughing, because we’re so strong, and because all manual work goes faster when kelpies are involved. If I work willingly, without a bridle or coercion, and you all work with me, we can do this in one night.”

  Atacama smiled at Molly. “You and I will be labourers for the dryad and kelpie tonight.”

  “What will the toad do?”

  “I’m sure the toad will be very useful, if the toad cares to come along…”

  The toad leapt off the slightly squashed bread and walked towards the door.

  As everyone grabbed their coats, hats and scarves, Molly found a clean fleece, then they all went outside. Molly and Beth wheeled the bikes out of the shed and Beth put the toad in her basket.

  Innes yawned. “I need a gallop after all that digging.” Then he changed into a horse.

  At the corner of the shed, he just changed into a horse.

  Molly watched carefully. He didn’t stretch or go through transition shapes of part-boy part-horse. The shift was simple and elegant. He was a boy. Then the air and light swirled round him, he was indistinct for a moment, and when he came back into focus, he was a horse.

  Molly turned to Beth. “Is that what it looks like when I change?”

  “I don’t know,” said Beth. “I haven’t been paying attention. Ask Innes. He’s an expert on the finer points of shapeshifting.”

  “I can’t really ask him now…” Molly turned to the tall white stallion, and reached out to stroke his nose. Then she remembered the horse was Innes and she wouldn’t stroke his nose when he was a boy. Or an underwater monster, or a pike. So she just smiled and said, “Will you tell me later whether I change the same way you do?”

  The horse nodded, then galloped off, followed by the long shadowy shape of the sphinx.

  Molly said, “Couldn’t Atacama fly there?”

  “No, his wings are just for show,” replied Beth. “They’re not strong enough to lift his weight off the ground. Only sphinx kittens actually fly. Come on.” And she cycled off into the dark.

  Chapter 13

  Molly thought they were pedalling up slopes far more often than coasting down, so they must be cycling into the hills. She wondered if she’d have the energy to do any building once they got to the farm. Perhaps the wyrm had only knocked down a few stones. Perhaps it wouldn’t be much work at all…

  When Beth shouted, “We’re nearly there,” they pulled the bikes off the road into a ditch. Beth stood at the bottom of a narrow track between two fenced-off fields and called, “Hello? Innes, Atacama?”

  Molly heard Innes’s distant voice. “Up here. Bring the lights from your bikes.”

  Beth said, “I can do better than that.” She found a branch lying on the verge and whispered to it. The end of the branch burst into flame, making a sudden bright torch in her hand.

  Molly lifted the toad out of the basket and they followed the steep track up the hill. Atacama was laughing when they arrived. “Poor Innes having to ask for light. None of his eyes are as good in the dark as my cat’s eyes.”

  Innes, who was leaning against a fence in his boy form, said, “I had to go slow for you on the way here, because my horse legs are better than your cat paws.”

  “Have your clever cat’s eyes noticed any trees round here?” asked Beth.

  Atacama said, “Down by the road, just beyond where you left the bikes.”

  Beth ordered, “Right, everyone give me a hand.”

  As they traipsed back down the hill, Atacama said, “I saw three buildings: a small farmhouse, a bigger but simpler barn and a little outhouse.”

  “And they’re all completely tumbled down,” added Innes. “I tripped over what’s left of the barn. It’s very low to the ground and the stones are scattered everywhere. It’s a full night’s work, even with a kelpie.”

  Beth led them into a small dark gathering of trees, creaky with sleepy bird noises above their heads. “We’ll need lots of branches for lights, scaffolding and a simple hurdle for Innes to haul stone. So I want every branch and every twig you can find piled up here. But only fallen wood, hare-girl, don’t you dare break a limb of any living tree.”

  “I know…” said Molly.

  Beth leant forward and murmured to the trees.

  At first, in the dark, Molly could only find branches by stumbling over them. But once Beth had finished speaking to the trees, she lit more torches and stuck them in the ground, so gathering wood was much easier. The toad even dragged some twigs over to Beth.

  They built a bonfire-sized pile of wood very quickly. Molly wondered whether it was because work goes faster with a kelpie involved.

  “What about a strong plank,” asked Beth, “for a lever or catapault system?”

  “That would be useful,” Innes agreed, shouting to be heard over the increasing volume of sleepy birds rustling and croaking above their heads.

  “Keep your voices down,” said Beth. “This must be the crows’ roosting site and we’re disturbing their sleep. I saw a wooden gate a few hundred metres back. Innes, you and the hare-girl take that apart and bring the longest strongest plank. I’ll put it back together later.”

  Molly and Innes walked out of the trees and followed the fence along the roadside.

  “Won’t the farm animals escape if we break the gate?” asked Molly.

  “I galloped through this field earlier. It’s empty. There’s nothing around here but us, a sleeping wyrm and those grumpy crows.”

  Molly shoved a burning torch into the ground and looked at the sturdy wooden gate: three horizontal planks and one longer plank nailed diagonally across them.

  “How are we going to take it apart? I don’t have a hammer or a screwdriver.”

  Innes laughed. “I have hooves!”

  And he shifted.

  Molly watched more closely this time. There definitely weren’t any intermediate stages. He was a boy, there was a moment when she couldn’t quite focus on him, then he was a horse.

  The shining white horse swung round and kicked twice. Once at the bottom corner of the diagonal plank and once at the top corner. The gate sagged, the planks hanging crookedly from bent nails.

  Innes changed back again, in the same cloudy unfocussed way, and said, “Let’s pull out the nails and ease the longest plank free.”

  “Is that how I change?” Molly asked, as she tugged on a loose nail at the top corner. “A girl, a cloudy moment, then a hare? Is that what it seems like to you?”

  “No,” said Innes, crouching down at the bottom corner. “I’ve only seen you shift a couple of times, but it’s not the same as when I watch my family shift. It looks more violent for you, more of a collapse inwards or an explosion outwards. How does it feel?”

  “Hot. A flash of heat in my bones. But only for
a moment, then I’m fine to run.”

  Innes stood up and started pulling on the diagonal plank. “When I shift, it feels like taking a step sideways. It’s comfy and natural, because the horse, the pike and this boy are all part of who I am. But you aren’t meant to change shape. It’s been forced on you; it’s not part of your nature.”

  “Is it damaging me?” She looked at her hands, thinking how much smaller they were when she was a hare and how much pressure she put on them as she sprinted and leapt.

  Innes shrugged. “Probably not. I’m not an expert on other shapeshifters, but if it was damaging you permanently, I’m sure Mrs Sharpe would be advising you to keep away from dogs, instead of sending you to interview the dog-dirt chucker. It might not be doing you any harm, but it’s not how you’re meant to live.”

  He jerked the plank free. They walked awkwardly away from the drooping gate, one at each end of the long heavy plank, watching their feet for rabbit holes and cowpats, calling out: “left” “right” “slower” and “watch out for that huge squishy one”.

  As they headed towards the patch of trees, they saw light flickering through the tree trunks and heard crows squawking and shrieking.

  “We’d better help Beth get the sticks out of there, so those birds can go back to sleep,” said Innes.

  But as they got closer, they could see crows diving at Beth and Atacama.

  Innes dropped the plank and ran to the trees.

  Molly started dragging the plank herself, not bothering about whether she was trailing it through cowpats.

  “I don’t know!” she heard Beth shouting. “Perhaps they didn’t like the torchlight? Let’s get out and leave them alone.”

  Molly saw that the wood had been piled onto a sort of sledge made of branches woven tightly together, like a trailer without wheels. She hefted the plank onto the edge of the pile, then ducked as a dark shape swooped at her head.

  Innes was already a horse and Beth was looping a rope of twisted bark round his pale neck. Then, just like a plough horse in an old painting, Innes hauled the pile of wood up the hill, away from the annoyed crows.