The Threads of Magic by Alison Croggon (best books for students to read .TXT) 📗

with a gentle, bland face and graying hair was holding his elbow. Another woman, so bent with age that she barely reached his breastbone, was standing right in front of him, inspecting him intently. As he was a shy man, he blushed to the roots of his hair and looked away, only to find that the tent was full of other people seated around a table where they had clearly been eating breakfast. All of them were staring at him. His gaze fell to his feet, where he kept it fixed on his buckles.

Those silver buckles, he thought, had brought him much more trouble than they could possibly be worth.

“Greetings, Sibelius d’Artan,” said the crone in front of him. “My name is Missus Clay. If you wish to be sick, there is a bucket to your left.”

Sibelius was very nauseous, but even feeling as bad as he did, the thought of throwing up in front of all these people filled him with embarrassment. He pressed his lips tightly together and shook his head.

“Sadly, transmogrification is a little discombobulating to the internal organs,” said the tall, gray-haired woman. Sibelius noted, with an increasing sense of unreality, that she sounded exactly like the owl. “We’ve never been able to get rid of it. And I was in a hurry. Well, if you’re not going to be sick, you might as well sit down. But keep that bucket handy.”

When Sibelius didn’t move, she gently led him to the table in the center of the tent and pressed him into a chair. A fair-haired boy with his hair pulled back in a ponytail was sitting opposite. He looked unsettlingly familiar. Distracted, Sibelius tried to place his face.

“It’s nice to see you, Sibelius,” said the boy, smiling a little tremulously. Sibelius realized with a start that it wasn’t a boy at all. It was Princess Georgette, dressed up as a commoner. What was she doing here?

“I suppose I’ve gone mad,” he said. He drew out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. “It was only a matter of time . . .”

“The will, if you please,” said Missus Clay.

Sibelius looked around the table. “I suppose you’re all witches?”

The gray-haired woman nodded. “Yes,” she said. “That’s right. And we want the will.”

“I can tell you that there’s not a skerrick of witch magic anywhere in that parchment.” Sibelius laughed with a note of hysteria. “I’ve looked and looked and looked.”

“We’ll be the judges of that, thank you,” said the woman. “My name is Missus Orphint, by the way. You’ve met Missus Clay, chief witch of the Witches’ Council. And these are the senior members.” She gestured around the table. “Aside from Princess Georgette, of course.”

Sibelius blinked. He had definitely gone mad. He thought he might as well accept it. It was, in any case, better here than sitting in his dusty chamber on the fifth floor of the Office for Witchcraft Extermination thinking about disembowelment.

He smiled weakly. “How very lovely to meet you,” he said.

“It won’t be lovely, if you didn’t bring the will,” said a pretty, dark-haired woman to his right.

“Hush, Amiable,” hissed a golden-haired man next to her. “Be nice. The poor man’s in shock.”

“You want the last will and testament of Mistress Prunelissima Arabella Pledge, spinster and seamstress of Omiker Lane of the Chokally Quarter? Or maybe I should just quote it to you. I know it all by heart.” Sibelius drew the will out of his pocket and threw it onto the table. “You can have it, with my blessings.”

Suddenly nobody was looking at Sibelius. Everyone’s gaze was fixed on the shabby parchment. For a few moments, nobody moved a muscle.

“Do you think it really is the spell?” said Georgette doubtfully. “It just looks like an ordinary will.”

“What would you know?” said Amiable.

Georgette cast her a look of dislike. “I know what official documents look like, if that’s what you mean,” she said.

Missus Clay shuffled forward. She picked up the will and held it in front of her with the tips of her fingers. When she let go, the parchment hung in the air, as if it had been pinned to an invisible board. She leaned forward and breathed on it.

Sibelius heard a bar of music, violin music he thought, played on an old, out-of-tune violin by a very bad musician. And then he heard a voice. A woman’s voice that held traces of strength but was also worn and scratchy. He looked around, trying to see who it was, but it was no one in the room. It was coming from the parchment.

Sibelius’s jaw dropped open. He had never even considered that the spell might be audible.

“I, Prunelissima Arabella Pledge, witch of Clarel, speaking in the Year of the Oak Apple, on the sixth day of the Month of Rejoicing, here make confession on my deathbed. I have done a dark thing, in a time of terrible darkness. I speak before you in humility and sorrow, both for what I have done and for what is to come. I cannot undo what I have done; forgive me. But I beg you to heal the wound and to close this evil, the evil that came before me and the evil that I have unwittingly created.”

The unseen witch paused. There was a stirring around the table, as if everyone drew breath at the same time.

“Firstly, it is imperative that the Heart is never taken from the casket that keeps it insulated from outside influences.”

“That’s torn it,” said Amiable. The others turned and hushed her.

“Secondly, it is crucial that the Stone Heart is not touched by a living soul. I cannot tell what would happen to any unfortunate who enters the sphere of its influence. Thirdly, and most important of all, it must be kept from the Specters.”

Old Missus Pledge paused again, struggling for breath.

“I sought to find a way to destroy the Specters forever. But alas, I failed. By abstracting the Heart from the Infant Vessel, I created a new kind of Rupture. And