Page 8 of The Changeling

We missed Mam in the winter, for she could not come home every evening. The walk from Inchbrakie was too far in the dark. She had a small room set aside for her at the castle, and stayed there most of the week, coming home only on Sundays and feast days. It was Nan who cared for us then. She taught us our letters and numbers, drawing them with the sharp point of a quill on a wooden tablet covered with wax. Nan had learned to read as a young woman, listening to Lady Marjorie and her sisters at their lessons. She was determined that Sorcha and I would have as much learning as if we were ladies too. ‘The beginning of wisdom is to seek knowledge,’ she told us many times. ‘You canna be wise if you willna learn.’

Nan had made herself a book of parchment bound together with leather, in which she drew pictures of flowers and leaves and seedheads and roots, and wrote in her awkward ink-blotted script how best they could be used in healing remedies and protective spells. On days when the rain beat hard on our thatched roof, I sat by the fire and studied it. All the wisdom of the world was recorded within its pages.

Nan also taught us the tree alphabet, simple carved lines that carried so many hidden layers of meaning. An old cunning woman had shown her how to carve the runes upon twigs gathered from the trees they symbolised. Nan had met her by chance in the woods one day, and had been told to return every dawn and dusk for the three days of Allhallowtide to learn their use. Nan had obeyed, and had found the old cunning woman a hard taskmaster and the lessons more difficult than she had imagined. She had persevered, though, and her hand-carved omen staves had since become very precious to her, consulted whenever a decision needed to be made.

Our great-aunt had never seen the old cunning woman again. It was as if she had come to the woods below the Knock for no other purpose than to teach Nan.

Every day, when we went out into the forest to forage, I looked for the old cunning woman but I never saw her. We often saw the Graham boys, though, galloping by, falcons on their wrists, dogs streaming behind. I longed to gallop with them. The world must seem so wide from up there.

One day in late autumn, not long before Sorcha and I turned seven, I was sitting with my twin on the doorstep, practising spinning with a spindle and distaff. Nan was busy with her hives, for it was almost time to overwinter the colony. The bees hummed among the ivy flowers, the last chance for them to gather honey to sustain them through the long black winter.

One fat golden-striped bumblebee hovered in front of me. Feeling a hum of energy between us, I reached a hand towards it. I would like to be a bee, I thought, and dive down the soft throats of flowers.

Somehow I lifted myself out of myself and sank down into the bumblebee. Everything changed. The world was suddenly shadowy and strange. The ivy flowers were dark purple, and I could see fiery blue traces in the air, as if tiny stars burst into being at the tips of the bee’s wings. Pathways of sweetness swirled about me. Trying to make my wings work, I blundered along and bumped into another bee. She reached out her furry antenna and touched mine. Clumsily I jerked away. She danced about me, blocking my way. The other bees swung towards me, buzzing angrily, bodies curved under to show the sharp point of their stingers. My courage failed. I fell back into myself, sick, dizzy, disorientated. Sorcha caught me as I swayed.

Nan straightened, her spade dark with dirt, and said, ‘What’s wrong, hinny?’

‘I went into a bee,’ I said, before everything blacked out.

I woke much later, tucked up in bed, Nan sitting in a chair nearby. I felt strange, as if the stuff of my spirit was too thin. She made me a hot drink of honey, lemon and whisky. It made my head swim.

‘So you went into a bee,’ she said.

I nodded dazedly.

‘Did you mean to?’

I shook my head.

‘You are lucky the bees didna sting you to death. Never cross into another creature’s body without asking permission of them first, and wear a red thread about your finger or wrist, to tether you to your own body so you can find your way back. Remember to chant a rhyme so the beast will release you. That old cunning woman I once met told me the spell she used, and made me learn it by heart, in case I ever needed it. She said, “I shall go into a hare with much sorrow and deep prayer, I go in the Lady’s name till I must come home again.” Then, when it was time for her to transform back, she would say, “Hare, hare, the Lady send thee care, now I be in a hare’s likeness, soon I be in a woman’s likeness.” Write it down and learn it by heart, hinny, else you may be lost forever.’

I stared at her, wide-eyed. ‘Do … do you?’ I asked at last. ‘Go into bees or hares, I mean.’

She shook her head. ‘Not I. I’ve heard of others doing so, but I never learned the trick. Come, you need to tell the bees you are sorry and give them a gift; else it is likely they will see you as an enemy and sting you next time you are in the garden.’

Nan took me to the kitchen and boiled a pot of water. Then, at her direction, I stirred in scoops of dried chamomile, yarrow, lemon balm, nettle and dandelion flowers.

‘Add a pinch of rue,’ Nan said. ‘For repentance.’

I obeyed at once.

‘Now a cup of honey. Use the jar with the broken honeycombs. And, Caiti, ken that this gift comes from you, no’ me. It will be a while till you can eat honey again, for we canna afford to waste a drop.’

I knew better than to argue. When the sweet-smelling tincture had cooled, I carried it out to the garden and set it down before the skeps.

Nan began to intone the spell, and I chanted with her:

Forgive me, bees, dinna fly away,

I dinna mean to hurt you.

Forgive me, bees, and drink of my brew

I beseech you all to stay.

A cloud of bees rose about me, buzzing loudly. Bracing myself, I stood motionless. I was not stung. The bees sipped at the honey tincture, and I gave a bob of a curtsey, as I had been taught.

‘Bees are God’s noblest creatures,’ Nan told me. ‘So small and yet so fierce, they fly from sunrise to sunset, singing as they go about their work, to bring us sweetness and light. You must never forget to tell the bees of any birth or death, and promise to be a good mistress to them.’