Pyre - A Novelette Featuring the Avebury Witches

Chapter 8

Rosy had lingered too long.

Arriving  in the front yard of her parent's farmstead, she found the household was up and people were milling about in the pearly light of early dawn like a flurry of disturbed pigeons. The four horses of the family were getting loaded. Three of them waited placidly, only Molls was showing the whites in her eyes and whinnying shrilly in protest at the dead weight landing on her back.

Molls. Unless Rosy's sacrifice was sufficient, she would lose her beloved mare as well.

The thought was still ringing in her mind when Bill emerged from the low entrance of the house his knees buckling under the weight of the sack on his back.

Her mother's voice shrilled after him from the corridor inside. "Now, who has packed that one? I thank you, Master Bill, but you can drop that. We'll have to leave it behind."

With a groan, Bill hefted the sack sideways and massaged his back. "Felt like I was carrying chunks of stone."

"You were, witch hunter," Birch said, baring his teeth in disgust. "That's my rock collection. I spend years to find pieces broken from the sacred stones. And some of the clay tablets the ancients hid in the soil. We must have this, it will bring us luck. But you don't understand these things."

Bill's eyes flared up in anger. "I'm no witch hunter, you brat. But I'll tell you freely, you won't get far if you insist on lugging along a rockery."

"You took the Druid's handiwork?" Rosy's mother still hadn't emerged from the house but her strident tones carried well enough. "No, that wont do at all. The Keepers will need those pieces, they are keys to open the portal. Hand them over this minute."

"No, don't," her father stomped into the courtyard. "We will take a couple for ourselves and leave the rest. The Keepers can pick them them up if they feel the need."

"Ash, I beg you." Rosy's mother emerged from the corridor, already in her sturdy travelling clothes, wringing her hands. "We can't do that. We must do as bid."

Her father thrust his fiery head at his life's companion. "And? We're already doing that, aren't we, Mary-Anne? Or we're about to. Dredging our skylles and giving up our grimoires and magical items, hah. Am I supposed to be grateful for that? Let the Keepers use their superior skylles and find these relics by themselves. Hurry up for heaven's sakes, the woods are acrawl with the fiends. And what do you think you are doing, young lady?" The last bit was directed at Rosy herself who had been creeping around the edge of the cottage, trying to get at the side window to climb inside and get to her room.

"I need to change," Rosy explained.

"Where have you been," her mother asked, among more hand-wringing. "You're still coming with us, aren't you? We'll need you for sure."

Anger surged up inside her. The Keepers still hadn't told the Red Wardens the whole truth.

"This is my intention, yes. But let me nip upstairs first, please." With that, she squeezed past her parents into the narrow corridor and up the staircase into the tiny room that had been her home for all her life. The shirt and blanket flew into a corner, before she too went for her travelling clothes, dark green cloth that was far too warm for the temperatures outside. She knotted the kerchief round her neck, ran a comb through her tangled locks, grabbed the coif and shoved it into her pockets. No need for that now. Her wardrobe looked strangely empty, her mother must have packed her things already.