The Book of Witching - Softcover

Cooke, C. J.

 
9780593816967: The Book of Witching
Softcover
ISBN 10: 059381696X ISBN 13: 9780593816967
Verlag: Berkley Books, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

A mother must fight for her daughter’s life in this fierce and haunting tale of witchcraft and revenge from the author of A Haunting in the Arctic.

Clem gets a call that is every mother’s worst nightmare. Her nineteen-year-old daughter Erin is unconscious in the hospital after a hiking trip with her friends on the remote Orkney Islands that met a horrifying end, leaving her boyfriend dead and her best friend missing. When Erin wakes, she doesn’t recognize her mother. And she doesn’t answer to her name, but insists she is someone named Nyx.

Clem travels the site of her daughter’s accident, determined to find out what happened to her. The answer may lie in a dark secret in the history of the Orkneys: a woman wrongly accused of witchcraft and murder four centuries ago. Clem begins to wonder if Erin’s strange behavior is a symptom of a broken mind, or the effects of an ancient curse?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

C. J. Cooke is an award-winning poet and novelist published in twenty-three languages. She teaches creative writing at the University of Glasgow, where she also researches the impact of motherhood on women's writing and creative writing interventions for mental health.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

CHAPTER ONE

Fynhallow

Isle of Gunn, Orkney

May 2024

It's almost sunrise.

A magenta streak across the horizon, a smooth, glittering sea.

The ranger's dog is barking, a wild, staccato squeal that splits the calm.

She shouts at him now to be quiet, her voice growing louder, her pace quickening as she moves toward him. He's a springer spaniel, two years old, easily roused. But he's never barked like this before. As though he's afraid.

Fynhallow's sand is soft, silken white, a seam that joins the Isle of Gunn to the North Sea.

The silhouette of the dog noses and whines at a dark shape by the caves that run along the outcrop. It must be a dolphin, she thinks, perhaps a pilot whale. Except there's no fin, no shape of a tail.

She sees the shape of two legs, and gasps.

The curious odor that she caught earlier registers: something has been burning. The wind was in the wrong direction before, but now she catches notes of flame and meat. The dog paws the ground near the body; she sees the hands are bound together at the end of bent, blackened arms.

Her pulse racing, the ranger reaches for her phone and flicks on the torch, and when the harsh white light falls on a charred grimace she drops the phone to the ground with a shout.

It lands upward, the white glare of the torch falling on the body. It is clear that the person is dead.

And her torchlight picks out another shape farther along the bay. She breaks into a sprint, talking to the dog as he follows her, soothing him.

Somewhere, embers glisten in a nest of twigs like rubies.

She lurches to a stop, just where the tide meets the sand. At her feet is the body of a teenage girl, a Nirvana print visible on her sooty T-shirt, tattoos of mermaids and beer cans on her forearms. Her face is encrusted with blood. The ranger crouches, noticing the dog is licking the girl's foot and whining.

Oh God, she thinks, fear thumping in her throat. Was this an accident, or murder?

She moves her fingers to the girl's neck, gasping with relief as she finds a faint pulse.

The girl is still alive.

Quickly the ranger snatches up her phone and begins to dial.

CHAPTER TWO

Fynhallow

Isle of Gunn, Orkney

January 1594

ALISON

I wake to the smell of fire.

I rise quickly, scanning the earthen floor of the cottage lest the carpet of ferns I have placed to hold the heat has set alight. Silver moonlight pours through the cottage window that overlooks the bay. Above my bed, the posy of herbs I fastened to the beam is silvered with frost. The air is filled with winter's teeth.

I wrap my shawl across my shoulders against the chill and make for the stove, enjoying the warmth. It is not yet dawn, and no one else stirs, not even the chickens in the rafters nor the calf that Beatrice has taken as a pet. Outside, an owl calls, and I stiffen. An owl is an omen. It brings a message.

I hold my breath, listening for the owl's tidings. These should unfurl inside my mind as a thought with edges, an instinct. But only the faces of my children come, and I realize with a start that I cannot hear either of them. Edward and Beatrice are restless sleepers, often calling out in slumber, even responding to each other, as though they inhabit the same dream. But tonight, there is only the call of the owl and the distant wash of the sea.

Edward's bed is empty. I tear back the coverlet and search beneath the straw mattress lest he has fallen beneath the ground, dissolved into vapor. He is not there.

"Beatrice?"

She does not stir. I lunge toward the gaping square of the neuk bed, set into the stone wall of the cottage for warmth. The calfling is curled up on the coverlet, where it usually is, for Beatrice likes it to sleep with her. But my daughter is gone.

A cold terror sluices around my shoulders, enclosing my heart in ice. Have the children been taken? William is yet in Kirkwall, repairing the stonework in the cathedral. When last we spoke, he had redoubled his efforts with the cohorts there who seek to overthrow the earl. And although the plot has yet to take shape, their consultation has not been without danger-the calfling that sleeps now in my daughter's bed was born of the milking cow we found put to death outside our front door five nights afore. Her throat had been cut from ear to ear.

I pull on my kirtle, cloak, then my cap and boots, before dashing into the night air, scanning the field and the byre for any sign of the children. No sign of them. William tore out the hedges that ran along the bank so we could keep watch for approaching visitors, but in the dark no such view is afforded. The black sky is clear, a full moon fixed above, creating pools of light and wells of deep shadow.

"Edward? Beatrice? You must call if you hear me!"

All is silent.

And still, the wind carries the musk of an open flame.

I hasten after it, heading first to the caves that run along the outcrop above the beach. Behind me, the owl lifts silently toward the moon, its white wings set aglow by moonlight. But then it curves around behind me, headed toward the brae behind our cottage.

That is where I am to go.


Voices swirl in the air as I near the top of the brae, though the clamor of my heart is enough to drown out almost all sound. The climb to the towering rocks is fearsomely steep, and for much of the year it is almost impossible to traverse on account of ice or flooding. The children often take their sledges out in the snows and hurl themselves down apace, and I watch, praying for their safety. It is sheer desperation now that helps me climb to the top, tearing my boots on the rocks as I do. Drenched with sweat, I grasp the base of the rock that stands at the top of the hill and pull myself to the summit.

I am careful to conceal myself as I peer down into the fairy glen below. The glen is named for the spiral of rocks found there, which legend says marks the spot where the fae meet. Tonight, it seems a different kind of gathering is occurring. Two score men and one woman congregate around a large fire in the center of the spiral, smoke pluming toward the sky. As my thoughts begin to untangle from the snare of blind fear, I remember-tonight is no ordinary moon. It is the Wolf Moon, the first of the year, marking a season of change, bravery, and loyalty.

I crouch behind the rock, aware that someone is drumming, and someone is speaking. It is difficult to hear their words, but then a figure amidst the crowd takes a familiar shape, and I realize that it is my mother. She is wearing a long cloak made of wolfskins and a helmet of deer horns. She approaches the fire, holding hands with two others. A girl, and a boy, both wearing cloaks of wolfskins.

Edward and Beatrice.

I open my mouth to call out, but then I recognize others in the group. The woman singing and drumming the bodhran is Jonet. She and I played together throughout many a summer on Fynhallow when we were children. The two men standing in front of the fire with crossed halberds are Solveig Anderson and David Moncrief, the blades of their weapons glinting in the flame.

The gathering is the Triskele, the oldest clan of magic-wielders in the world. And they are initiating my children.

I creep down the other side of the hill toward another rock, my mind wheeling for answers. I am outnumbered, and the Triskele will not halt an initiation ceremony at my bidding. They will not hesitate to cut me down if I attempt to stop it.

Even though I was once one of them.

So I watch, my heart in my mouth, as the children answer questions posed to them by the halberd bearers. They must answer the questions correctly, or face being impaled. I scramble to my feet, the impulse to protect them overcoming my fear of...

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Verlag
Berkley Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
059381696X
ISBN 13 
9780593816967
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
365
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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