twisted her head left and bit back a scream.
The skull looking back at her had its mouth open. The spiderwebs that bound the mummified child had long turned gray and now sagged morosely. The child’s skin was the black of old book leather. Curled black hair poked dully between the smoky silk around its skull. Its eye sockets had been closed over with fresher webs.
She looked away, heart cascading. How long had she been here? How long would she need to hang here until she was too weak to do anything and met the same fate? How much time did she have? A fresh wave of tears built up inside her, threatening to burst out. How much time?
Time.
T-i-m-e. T-I-M-E. T-I…
If she screamed now that she’d spat out the gag, the witch would surely hear her. She closed her eyes, focused on the letters. T-I-M-E. T-I-M-E. Tick tock. Tick tock goes the clock. Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock… Her breaths came more evenly as she ran the children’s rhyme through her mind. The bird looked at the clock. The dog barked at the clock. The bear slept by the clock… Her heartbeat slowed. Before she realized what she was doing, she moved her legs left, just a little, then let them drop back. As she swung down, she lifted her legs right. And drop. Tick tock. She began a rhythm, a human pendulum, swaying on the wall. She didn’t ask herself why; she knew it felt right. With each drop and swoop up, she strained, getting higher and higher. She felt her back, her bottom, her elbows, her heels, scrape on the dirt, grinding through the silk. That’s it! Scrape! Tick! Scrape! Tock! She swung herself, straining left, straining right; swing-scrape, swing-scrape. The tightness around her chest eased just slightly. Her strapped ankles grew slightly freer. She felt wet, cold earth trickle into her shirt, down her back. Left-swing-scrape… Right-swing-scrape… a little higher, a little higher… She could flex her arms, just a little, but that little bought her room to swell and contract as she swung. A couple more! She could hold her legs a few centimeters apart. Her shoulders could shrug. She could slide her hands across her belly. Yes! One more! She swung…
And felt a line of fire draw across her shoulder blades. She yelped. Her body scraping across the raw earth had exposed a sharp rock, and it dug deep into her flesh as she slid across it. It felt like a line of boiling oil had been dribbled from shoulder to shoulder. Hot tears poured from her eyes and she bit her bottom lip hard to stop the scream from coming out. She stopped swinging.
And, despite the tears, grinned in triumph. Her feet were on the floor.
N icholas watched Quill rise from her chair and walk to the fire pit.
Her calves-squat and blue and veined, then slender and pale and taut-passed before his face. She knelt at the larger fire and began stoking its coals. Glowing orange sparks rose in a syrupy fountain of dying stars.
Outside, the wind grew stronger. It batted at the window, setting it knocking in its frame, and whistled sorrowfully in the flue. The fire behind the grate grew brighter as if jealous of its increscent neighbor.
Nicholas felt his mind eat its way back, like a snake through its burrow, to the Ealing flat’s bathroom where he sat watching Cate hear her mobile phone, climb down the ladder, slip and fall-sudden as a snapped branch-to strike the icy white of the bath edge, and lie still. She’d never have fallen if he hadn’t phoned. He’d never have phoned if he hadn’t dropped the bike. He wouldn’t have dropped the bike if he hadn’t seen the face between the dark trees in Walpole Park. And he wouldn’t have seen the face if Quill hadn’t asked for him to see it.
She’d summoned the Green Man.
“You killed my wife,” he whispered.
Quill drew a hooked poker through the coals as if she hadn’t heard him and blew gently through pursed lips. Flame burst alive, and, as reward, her profile grew young and perfect, a sculpture cruel and lovely.
“I asked. The Green Man arranged. But you killed her,” she corrected.
The flames in the fire pit licked higher.
“You selfish bitch,” he whispered. “Cate. Tristram. All those children.”
Quill looked sideways at him. “You haven’t asked why,” she said.
Nicholas saw she wore a thin belt under her cardigan. On it was slung a sheath, narrow as a letter opener, from which protruded a bone handle.
“I know why.”
She arched her eyebrows.
“You bought yourself a longer life with theirs,” he said.
She watched him for a while, long enough for him to hear the hungry crackle of flames and the eerie moan of high, cold wind-the scene was so rustic, they could be a hundred miles away and a hundred years ago. Then she shook her head and laughed. For just a moment, it was a pretty, girlish laugh without poison or hate. Then it soured and died. She gritted her teeth.
“I did nothing for me, Nicholas Close,” she tutted. “I thought you were wiser than that.”
He watched her: an ancient woman with a ghostly flicker of youth haunting her features, tending a fire in an old cottage in the middle of woods that should have been bulldozed and built over long ago.
“For the woods?”
She gave the fire a last prod. Satisfied, she rose painfully to her feet.
“Everything I’ve done was done for these woods.”
She sat again, and fussed her fingers over the wooden calendar, then leaned to look out the window. As she did, moonlight struck her skin, washing away the years and bringing the young Rowena Quill full into life. She stayed that way-youthful and perfect-as she spoke, staring at the moon.
“My mam had skill. She taught me. Her mam taught her. We were women of the woods for as long as long. There was respect once, for women with knowledge. Who knew how to heal. How to divine this and that. How to help sway luck. Respect and fear. But the world, the world moved on…” Rowena cocked an eye at him. “Bought life, ya say? Do you know what was considered an old woman when I was born? Forty years.” She hissed the words, disgusted. “Forty years was old age. We were a dozen folk a cabin in our clachan. Our land was long in the hands of the English. Cromwell did his work well and thorough. My folk were cottiers, pretty low folk. We grew lumpers, ’taters. We all grew lumpers…” She nodded to herself. “I was jes’ a girl, not twelve, when the ’tater leaves started turnin’ black and rottin’.” As she spoke, her lilt grew thicker, her gaze farther away. “You’ve smelled dead t’ings. But nothin’ stenches like a t’ousand fields of a million wet, rottin’ lumpers. No ’taters. So they sold us corn. Peel’s brimstone. It rips ya up inside and does nothin’ good for ya. Useless. We were payin’ ta die. We started starvin’. My beautiful mam…”
Rowena’s skin was the cold blue-white of marble in the moonlight. She might have been carved of milkstone, but for the flicker of her dark eyes.
“She, all of us, we all starved thin. So we all stole. And we all whored. Only I picked poorly. The man I whored for wanted what I wouldn’t give him. He wanted a wife and a sprig.” She frowned. “Sweet words and fancies. I thought about it, I truly did. But the shame of an English husband was too much. Too much.” Her small nose wrinkled with distaste. “He got to hittin’ hard, takin’ for free t’ only thing I had to sell. So I stabbed him. But I were no good at that, neither. Three days he took to perish. Plenty of time for him to tell who done it and for the coats to find me and jail me up. And try me. Hangin’, they gave me.”
She swiped the fire lazily with the poker, and turned her eyes to Nicholas.
“But we had a calf, a skinny ragged t’ing. The most valuable t’ing me mam owned. Mam took it to the woods on Mabon, when we say thanks for the harvest. Not much ta t’ank for. But she took it and cut it and asked Him to save me from swingin’.” Rowena nodded her head at the carved image of the Green Man. “The next week, m’ sentence was commuted to transportation. Mam waved me off from Youghal. She walked all the way, poor pinched t’ing, and as we were marched to the pier, she ran up and told me how she bought my life. What He did for her. She made me promise, wherever I ended up, to show m’ thanks by lookin’ after His woods.
“He saved me.”
She stared at Nicholas, chin high.
The fire ticked uneasily.
Nicholas held her eyes.
“And who is here to save the children from you?”
Quill didn’t move a muscle. She seemed frozen in light and time, an ice statue that could stare implacably for a thousand years. She spoke at last.
“Blood is the only sacrifice that pleases the Lord.”
T here was nothing left in Hannah’s stomach to sick up. As she’d struggled to ease her hands out of the silk,
