Page 20 of The Snow Witch

The scene played out, the kneeling woman standing up and walking over to the dresser, opening a drawer here, a drawer there. She spoke words in a whisper over the concoction she was making, then came towards Violet – or whoever’s body Violet was inhabiting right now, holding a beaker out, her eyes sympathetic and understanding.

‘I did know you would come to me. I have exactly what you need⁠—’

‘No!’ cried Violet, turning her face away, squeezing her eyes shut. She didn’t want to drink anything in there.

Then suddenly, the old-fashioned world melted away, and Violet found herself standing in the muddy entrance way to the ramshackle old building, the only things evident that lived here being animals.

She looked at the stick and saw how the thorns had indeed been sheared off, and threw it down on the ground, scared to handle it any more.

Then she pressed her hands to her stomach and looked down, tears running down her cheeks. ‘People really did that,’ she said, her voice catching on a sob. ‘It really happened. What the hell did they put into that stuff?’

Mugwort, said a voice in her ear, picked at the Summer Solstice…

That was more than enough for Violet. She turned on her heel and ran out of the cottage, jumping through the snow, hoping she wouldn’t stumble into a ditch as she ran.

But thank God she didn’t.

She managed to get back into the car, and get the thing started. Then she turned it around awkwardly and sped down the track, away from Meg’s cottage.

Ellen’s voice still haunted her as she drove away: God won’t help me, so you have to. I know it’s wrong, but I can’t… Tam is dead, and I cannot… I cannot have another child!

Violet sobbed again, sniffing and wiping her nose and eyes with the back of her hand. She felt her experience topped bloody Ollie’s. He’d only felt creeped out and watched. She felt like she’d lived it.

She had no idea where she was heading to, but she needed to be away from there. It was all just too much to think about.

* * *

The campsite Jake had chosen was beautiful, even in such wintery weather, and Jake had a great spot which meant he could look out at hills and trees as far as the eyes could see.

Portions of Hadrian’s Wall were dotted here and there, and the sunset had been incredible: an orange and silver sky laced with lilac clouds and the round ball of the sun sinking down behind the horizon. It was eerie as hell, silent and relentless as the sun dropped out of sight, the snowy fields stained with gold until the world was velvet black and the stars came out.

Jake sat for a long time with a glass of wine, his imagination at work again as he thought about the soldiers who had lived and worked here; how it would have appeared to them, how many of them worshipped the sun as a deity and prayed for it to rise again. There were, he knew, a couple of standing stones a few miles along the road near Vindolanda fort – the Mare and Foal. This whole place was peppered with sacred places, and the Mare and Foal had apparently been part of a Bronze Age circle, the central place in the area where people had worshipped.

He wasn’t surprised that Violet had decided to visit this area. The idea of sacred spaces was one of the things they both loved; although, to be fair, she was much more into the people side of it, whereas he loved the visibly tactile elements: the stones, the altars, the things he could touch or study. He found himself staring at them for a long time, appreciating the workmanship and what they meant to the followers of that religion or that god or goddess.

It was completely dark and silent when he turned in for the night. He was almost reluctant to do so; despite the cold, he could sense the peace and the mystery, and the lives people had lived, just out of reach. There was something quite magical about it, really – the idea of witches notwithstanding, of course – but Jake felt genuinely at one with his surroundings tonight.

The double bed he made up in the van was, he knew, comfortable, and he didn’t take long to fall asleep. The memory of the Angel Inn must have been lingering, though, despite the resonating peace in the darkness all around him, because his dreams were full of mixed-up images that didn’t seem to make much sense.

He was back in the inn, sitting in the corner; then he was wandering the upstairs corridors of the building, counting footsteps. He was huddled in the darkest corners, and he was waiting for something. Then he was wandering through the darkened streets and there was a dream within the dream where he was asleep, but he was remembering a woman’s touch and her soft hair beneath his fingers.

The bed where they lay was hard and unforgiving, but it didn’t matter because they were together.

In the dream, Jake opened his eyes and looked at the woman, fully expecting it to be Violet with her fair hair and her grey eyes, but it wasn’t. This woman was white-blonde and although she had grey eyes, he could tell it wasn’t Violet. But her eyes were warm and she reached out, smoothing his hair back from his face.

‘Just be with me. Be with me. Or let me be with you,’ said Jake in the dream.

The girl opened her mouth to respond, but Jake suddenly woke up, disorientated. He stared around in the pitch-black of his van, his heart pounding, as the shapes in the vehicle shifted and changed as he came back to the real world.

He turned over and went back to sleep, and it seemed that the dream had gone, and the rest of the night was, thankfully, unremarkable.

13

THEN

The day after Alice had come to Meggie, the snow lay thick on the path that led to Meg’s cottage. The field in front of her that met the Burn was desolate, with not a footprint to be seen. Meg opened the door to bring some firewood in, and inhaled deeply. The air was cold and fresh, but the faint scent of woodsmoke drifted up from the village. Meg looked down to her left and felt uneasy. She wondered if Alice had taken the draught, and whether she had been sensible about it, as she had promised.

Meg could not shake the feeling that something was wrong. The image of the scattered flower heads and the apparent lack of mugwort remaining in her basket worried her, and she determined that she would go and see Alice today.