Beneath the hornbeam tree

Roused by the cold wind and the groaning of the trees, I decided to head back to the campsite. I stood up, brushing the dirt and leaves from my backside. My hand touched something wet. The back of my pyjama bottoms was sticking to my thighs. I held my hand up to the moonlight. It was covered in a viscous, crimson liquid; blood.

Assuming that I must have scraped myself against the tree bark or a sharp stone, I rubbed the back of my legs, but there was no pain. All I felt was an uncomfortable wetness, where my pyjama bottoms clung to my skin.

I turned to look where I’d been sitting and saw where the blood had come from. There was an unusual looking squirrel, dead at the base of the hornbeam tree. I had been sitting in the pool of blood, spreading from beneath it.

The squirrel wasn’t any bigger than a regular, grey squirrel, but its fur was as black as the night sky and shone with a lustre that embarrassed the moon.

I bent down and turned the poor creature over. On its neck, there were two small puncture marks. They looked to be about the size and width of a cat’s fangs.

I wanted to show the squirrel to Lottie and my parents – I was sure none of them had ever seen a black squirrel before – but I knew that I couldn’t leave its carcass lying there, in the woods. Even if the cat did not return for it, fresh meat like that would not last long with red kites circling and muntjacs snuffling around.

I picked up the dead squirrel and was surprised by how cold it was. 

A dark blur caught my eye. 

A foot or so above my head, there was another black squirrel, looking down at me from a branch of the great hornbeam tree. I couldn’t see it clearly, with its back to the moon, but it looked like there was blood was dripping from its face. I thought the cat must’ve wounded it too, and I felt sorry for the poor creature.

Thinking that I might be able to help it, if only I could catch hold of it, I laid its dead brethren on the ground and reached a hand up, toward the squirrel in the tree. I expected it to turn and flee, but it remained still, the only movement, the rapid rise and fall of its tiny chest. I felt its soft pelt against my skin. But no sooner had my fingers wrapped around the squirrel, than it shot out of my grasp, scurrying up my arm and onto my shoulder.

‘Help me,’ it squeaked into my ear. ‘My wife was killed by the witch’s cat.’

I sighed and moved to rub my weary eyes, until I remembered my hands were covered in squirrel blood. It’d been three days since I’d slept properly. First, I’d heard a tree talk, and now I’d been approached by a grieving rodent. I was either asleep and dreaming, or I was delirious and hallucinating. Either way, I did not have the energy to deal with whatever was happening to me.

‘I don’t think I can help,’ I replied. ‘I’m very tired. And I’m just a normal girl. I wouldn’t know where to begin, dealing with a witch, or her cat.’

‘Fawna, you are anything but normal.’

The squirrel’s words sent a jolt of excitement coursing through me. How did it know my name? And why was I not normal?

‘Don’t you know, you’re the daughter of a witch?’ the squirrel continued, as if reading my mind. ‘You have magic in your veins.’

‘Mum’s a witch?’

‘You must have noticed that your mum is special. Really think about it. She’s never been like all the other mums, has she?’

I shook my head. What the squirrel said was true. I had always thought Mum was the smartest, strongest, and most beautiful woman in the world. She had wild, curly hair and thick eyebrows, and when she really glared at you, the intensity in her black eyes seemed to fix you in place. On more than one occasion, I’d seen her reduce Dad to a puddle of tears of the floor with nothing but a look. Maybe that was one of her spells. And if she was a witch, did that mean I would grow up to be one, too?

I thought for a moment, weighing up what might be happening to me.

If I was dreaming, then this was a fascinating dream, and I wanted to see where it would go next. If I was hallucinating, then the worst that would happen is I’d wander around the woods for a while, talking to an imaginary squirrel, until my parents came looking for me and found that I’d gone mad. This option was less appealing, but I thought I might as well have fun with my madness, while it lasted. And then, finally, if by some miracle what was happening was real, I was a witch who’d just awakened her power to talk to animals.

‘I’ll help,’ I said, my face blushing, as I thought of all the powers I might possess. ‘Tell me what I need to do.’

As I spoke, a drop of blood fell from the squirrel’s face, and landed on my shoulder.

‘Did the cat hurt you, too?’ I asked.

‘Don’t worry about me,’ the squirrel replied, jumping from my shoulder to the woodland floor. ‘Help me take vengeance against the witch, and my gravest wound will be healed.’

‘And what about her cat?’ I asked, suddenly feeling uneasy. I thought that I could talk to the witch and ask her to put a bell on the cat’s collar, to warn the squirrels it was coming, but communicating with her cat directly sounded more difficult. Even if I did now possess the power to speak to animals, cats did not strike me as good listeners. Cats were like younger sisters – proud, stubborn and wilfully antagonistic. If growing up with Lottie had taught me anything, it was that some creatures could not be reasoned with.

‘Don’t worry about that, I will handle her familiar,’ the squirrel said. Then, the rodent seemed to get lost in its thoughts for a moment, its little nose twitching, its glassy eyes staring up into the darkness. ‘Actually, that’s a good idea. You should give me a name, and I can become your familiar.’

‘Really?’ I asked. ‘Ok then, how about Slick?’

The squirrel’s body stiffened. I could feel that it was glaring at me. ‘Slick?’

‘Yeah, you know. It’s a cool guy’s name, for smooth talkers and slick operators,’ I said, thinking of a lie as quickly as I could. I did not think Slick would appreciate being told that I’d named him that because his black fur made it look like he’d been dunked in oil.

‘Very well then, Slick it is,’ Slick said. He raised both hands to the moon and stood there, posing, for what felt like ages.

I squinted, trying to see if the little squirrel was still breathing. I wondered if the magic entering him had been too powerful for his injured body to take. But then, just as I was about the give him a nudge with the toe of my welly boot, Slick dropped his arms.

‘It is done,’ he squeaked. ‘I have been reborn as your familiar. Bring my wife’s corpse so that her flesh might bear witness to our vengeance. Tonight, you and I will seize bloody retribution, together!’

I picked up the body of the dead squirrel and followed my new familiar into the woods. I didn’t have the heart to tell Slick that I wasn’t the kind of witch who delighted in bloodshed. If I really was a witch, I’d probably only use my new powers to tell all the horses how pretty and strong they were, and maybe to tell the muntjacs to get lost, when I was trying to sleep.

After a while, it occurred to me that I was lost. I should’ve been scoring the trees with a sharp rock, to keep track of the route we’d taken, but Slick had been moving at such a pace, I hadn’t had time to think about marking our path, let alone actually do it.

‘Hurry,’ Slick called, noticing that I was slowing down. ‘We must reach the witch’s house before sunrise.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Witches hate sunlight. She’ll go to sleep, if we’re too late.’

At first, I thought about objecting. If we were going to fight the witch, as Slick seemed to think we were, then I would rather have crept up on her, while she slept. But I did not want to hurt her. I just wanted to talk. If worst came to worst, I thought that I could always dazzle her with the light from my head torch and call for a deer to carry me to safety.

Before long, we reached the far end of the woods and stepped out into the gardens of the manor house. The upper part of the manor house had traditional Tudor cladding, with a white render and black timber beams, running in parallel lines, all around the building. The lower part of the house was harder to see in the dim moonlight, but it looked darker and more weathered. A few dozen feet off to our right, there was a narrow path that wound its way up to a large, white door.

‘This is where the witch lives,’ Slick said. He was panting for breath, and I could’ve sworn I heard his tiny belly rumble.

I took a step toward the footpath, but Slick squeaked in protest.

‘I know another way in,’ he said. ‘We’ll go in through the back and take her by surprise.’

Treading as carefully I could, I did my best not to damage any of the flowers in the garden. The moon was past its zenith, and the first rays of the morning sun would soon peak over the horizon. I was starting to feel self-conscious. If any of the groundskeepers or morning shift came in early, I would have a hard time explaining to them that I’d broken into the manor house to reprimand a witch, on the orders of a talking squirrel. The likeliness that I’d gone mad seemed to grow with every squelching step I took.

‘That’s it,’ Slick said, using his tail to point to a metal grate that had just come into view, on the rear of the house. The grate was raised from the ground by a few inches, but it was shorter than me, and barely wide enough to fit one person.

‘This isn’t a door,’ I said, as we drew closer.

‘No, it’s a food tunnel,’ Slick replied. ‘Servant boys used to bring baskets of food down here to the kitchens, for the Greys.’

‘The Greys?’

‘They used to rule this place, before they were betrayed.’

The anger in Slick’s voice surprised me.

‘What happened to them?’ I asked.

‘They were hunted almost to extinction, that’s what. Chased out into those woods and speared down, like game. A wooden stake through the heart will kill just about anything, even a…’ Slick tailed off and turned to look at me. His chest was heaving, and his tail bristled with rage. ‘Even one as divine as an aristocrat.’

‘How awful,’ I said, wondering just how Slick had come to know so much about the history of the house. I thought that maybe the trees had told him; that maybe the woods still held the memories of the awful things that had happened, there; that maybe nature never forgot.

Placing Slick’s wife on the ground, I wrapped my hands around the metal bars of the grate and winced as the jagged iron scratched my skin.

Well, that proves it, I thought, if I can feel pain then I can’t be dreaming. This is either real, or I’ve lost my mind.

Slick slipped through the gap between two metal bars and raced into the darkness, beyond. ‘Give the grate a pull,’ he called back to me, his high-pitched voice echoing in the tunnel.

I did as he said, pulling the metal grate from the wall, before stepping into the darkness.

There was no sign of Slick, inside. My back was blocking out most of the moonlight, so it was difficult to see anything at all. I reached up and turned the dial on my head torch. A burst of light came out of the bulb, and then disappeared with a pop. The bulb had blown, but the light had lasted just long enough to show me that I was in a narrow passageway, carved out of stone.

I thought about turning back – I knew that it was the sensible thing to do – but once again, my curiosity got the better of me. I put my hands against either wall of the tunnel and began to shuffle down toward the old manor house kitchens.

The start of the passageway had been angled on a slight decline, but as I pressed on, the angle became too steep to manage. The stone floor had been worn smooth over the years, and my wellies were slipping and sliding, as though I were walking on ice. My arms were the only things keeping me upright.

‘This is stupid,’ I muttered to myself, as my left leg nearly went out from under me. At any moment, I felt like I was going to slip and crack my skull open, and then I really would be in trouble. All I could do was press onwards, and hope that I made it to the bottom in one piece.

As I finally neared the end of the passage, I heard Slick’s voice again. He sounded pleased with himself.

‘Are you there, Mother?’ he called.

I hadn’t expected him to call me Mother, but when I thought about it, it made sense. After all, I had made him my familiar. Wild animals, like Slick, probably didn’t know the word Master, so Mother seemed like the next best thing.

‘I’m here,’ I said, edging closer. But Slick must not have heard me, because he continued to shout.

‘Mother, I did it. I tricked a human girl. I lured her into the woods and brought her here for you to feed on. Do you hear me, Mother? I’ve brought you flesh blood.’