A Witch In Winter by Ruth Warburton

and rain. On some superstitious instinct I shot the bolt as well.
    There was plenty of soft white wood ash in all the grates in the house, so I took a handful from the study fireplace and added it to the mix. Then I went back to the living room hearth and stared down at the book.
    Mix … & eat thereof .
    I shuddered and stirred the cup with my finger. It squelched and ground and gritted, and a butcher’s smell came up. Nausea rose in my throat and the cut on my hand throbbed painfully, but I’d come this far, I might as well get it over. I put it to my lips and took a mouthful.
    It was indescribably disgusting; a thick mixture like wet clay; a foul, clotted mass of grit and gore. My stomach heaved, trying to spit it out – but I fought down the wave of revulsion and managed to swallow a little and keep it down. I was pretty sure that ‘eat thereof ’ did not mean ‘put in your mouth and sick right up again’.
    While my mouth was still clotted, I spoke the words of the incantation.
    ‘Hwat!’ My tongue was clagged with grit, my throat closing and heaving against the trickling ooze.
    ‘Hwat, storm-geboren.’
    The taste was vile in my mouth.
    ‘Hwat, loathéd lyftfloga.’
    I choked, but forced myself on.
    ‘Hwat, sceadu, Brimwolf.
    Hwat, windræs.
    Hwat, o Brimwolf.’
    Nausea rose again, threatening to overwhelm me, and I gritted my teeth, drawing shuddering breaths in and out through my nose, trying to keep it together.
    ‘Hwat, o Brimwolf!
    Come!’
    When I finished there was silence. I waited for a moment, fighting the urge to crouch and wrap my arms protectively around myself – but nothing happened.
    I closed the book with a sigh. Probably I’d missed some vital step, or you needed the blood of a real witch. Probably I’d pronounced the incantations wrong. Let’s face it – it was most likely all rubbish anyway.
    Feeling flat and depressed, I washed out my mouth at the kitchen sink, then went up to my room to lie down. I put the spell book on the window sill. I’d return it to its hiding place later, I thought wearily, but right now I was more drained than I’d have thought possible. The wind shrieked and howled in the chimney as I climbed into bed, but I didn’t care. My head hit the pillow, and I slipped into the cool abyss of sleep.
    I awoke with a jump, to the sound of a crash in the meadow outside. Somewhere a gate had blown loose and banged with a ceaseless, monotonous rhythm. The wind was mounting, and there was something in its voice that made me shiver and huddle deeper into my duvet. It was a strange howling, a shrill booming roar. At last I gave up trying to ignore it and went to the window.
    The forest stretched out, dark and lush, and beyond that the restless waters of the bay. Far out, over the water, a shadow was racing over the sea, darkening everything in its path. It looked like a great dark stormcloud, but I’d never seen a cloud move so fast. The shrieking grew louder, and the shadow spread and darkened until the whole bay was almost as dark as night, only the pathetic glint of the lighthouse piercing the murk. There was a terrible crash far away, like a rock fall into the bay, and a tearing, rending sound. I shivered, thinking of all the fishermen out in their boats in this dreadful weather.
    The wind grew louder still, and its note had a wailing, keening sound, like children crying, or seagulls mewing, though there wasn’t a single bird to be seen in the sky. Even the rooks had fled the great beech tree and the branches were clean and bare, for the first time since I’d come to Wicker House.
    The dark cloud was coming closer and closer. First the forest was covered in its shadow, then the meadow, and now the windows of the house were darkening. I backed away, an inexplicable panic rising in me. I heard my own voice, thin and weak against the shrieking din, repeating, ‘It’s just a storm, it’s just a storm, it’s just a storm.’ But finally I couldn’t even hear my own