IT WAS ANOTHER full day of activities at Red Rigg House. Tennis, football, archery, rambling, croquet – there were so many choices that Ashley felt overwhelmed. She chose to do pottery, which took place in a big airy space towards the back of the house, where patio doors looked out towards the forest and the mountain that loomed over it. A lady from a nearby art college had been brought in specially to teach them, and for a few hours, Ashley was perfectly happy. She learned how to use long grey sausages of clay to make pots and cups, which was called coiling, and she learned how to paint what they’d made with muddy-looking stuff called ‘slip’, which would, the lady promised them, look colourful when the pots were fired. There was even a chaotic hour where they were shown how to ‘throw on the wheel’, which mainly resulted in a lot of mess and misshapen clay blobs. At the end of the session, the lady told them that if they wanted the pots they had made, they could fill in a form, and once the pots were fired, they could be posted to their homes. Ashley was handed the form and was eager to fill it out, until she saw that it would cost around ten pounds for what she had made to be finished and sent home. She glanced at the rows of names on the forms, and then passed it to the kid next to her without signing it.
After that, they were given sandwiches and lemonade on the lawn, sitting on large tartan blankets spread across the grass. Ashley tentatively sat at the corner of one, near some girls she vaguely recognised from dinner, but they gave her one brusque look and carried on with their own conversations. Stung but determined not to show it, Ashley turned away slightly and concentrated on her sandwich as though it were the most interesting thing in the world. It was a bright and sunny day.
‘Hey, Ashie, do you want to come and meet a friend of mine?’
Ashley looked up to see Malory standing over her. The sun shone from behind, turning the older girl’s black hair into a halo of reddish brown.
‘Okay.’ Ashley downed the rest of her lemonade and stood. She could feel the other girls on the picnic blanket looking up at her, and she felt a surge of strange pride. She was the only one Malory deemed interesting enough to talk to. ‘I’ve finished my sandwich.’
The two of them walked across the lawn, towards the east wing of the house. Beyond the gardens was a series of smaller brick buildings, yellowed and old-looking to Ashley’s eye. There was a van parked outside one of them, its back doors open. Standing near it wearing a bloody apron was a tall, stocky woman, her greying hair tied back in a ponytail. At the sight of her, Ashley felt a shiver of unease. This couldn’t be who Malory was taking her to meet, was it? In Ashley’s world, adults were not potential friends – not bad, necessarily, but certainly separate. However, Malory was smiling and waving, and the woman with the bloody apron raised her hand to them.
‘Ashie, this is Melva Goodacre. She supplies us with meat from her farm. And’ – Malory leaned down to get closer to Ashley’s ear – ‘she’s a witch.’
‘Less of that now, you,’ said Melva, although she was smiling as she wiped her hands on her apron. The ends of her fingernails were semicircles of dark red. ‘There was a time when throwing the word “witch” around could get me burned at the stake.’
‘Are you though?’ asked Ashley. She found she couldn’t stop looking at the blood smeared across the apron. ‘A witch?’
Melva grinned. ‘Some may say that, I suppose. Come on, do you want to see something interesting they won’t show you on your little school tour?’
Malory squeezed Ashley’s hand. ‘I’m sure Ashie would love that.’
‘All right then.’ Melva took her apron off and threw it in the back of her van. Then, she went to one of the low stone buildings and used an outside tap to wash her hands. The door of the building was open slightly, and inside, Ashley glimpsed raw red bodies hanging from the ceiling.
‘That’s for your dinner later,’ Melva said, winking. ‘There’s always a hungry mouth to feed. Come on, let’s go up to the fell.’
The three of them walked together through the grounds of the house. They passed through a herb garden, which had a small section behind a fence dedicated to poisons – Melva pointed out hemlock, foxgloves, and opium poppies – and into the forest that clustered at the foot of the fell. As they walked, Melva kept up cheerful commentary about the trees and the birds, the flowers and plants that they passed, touching on the history of Green Beck and the house itself, while Malory occasionally added comments of her own – how she’d once found a jackdaw chick in the woods and looked after it until it was able to fly, how she and her brother had buried a time capsule somewhere in the trees several years ago and had since lost the map that told them where it was. Ashley listened to them both, nervous but happy.
Eventually, the trees thinned a little and the mountain began to sneak in at the edges of their vision, grey and green and black. Here, they followed a small path until they came to an untidy pile of rocks. A tiny stream sprang from them, clear water running quietly over smooth pebbles.
‘Ah, now, here we are.’ Melva knelt by the water and dipped her wide, shovel-shaped fingers into it. ‘This is a sacred spring, dedicated to the goddess Andraste.’
‘See,’ said Malory, elbowing Ashley lightly in the side. ‘Told you she was a witch.’
Melva chuckled, but she didn’t deny it. ‘It’s said that if you drink from this spring, you’ll live to be a hundred years old, and all your wishes come true. Andraste was a goddess of secret places and secret rites. She keeps an eye out for the wild world and for the innocent and blameless.’ The old woman looked wistful now, her eyes bright, as though she might cry. And then she seemed to pull herself together. ‘Hardly anyone knows about it now, so it’s a special secret we’re sharing with you.’
Ashley nodded, uncertain what to say or do. For a few moments, it was quiet between the three of them.
‘Do you … do you want me to drink from it?’ She hoped not. Ashley had a city child’s suspicions of the natural world and was quite certain the water couldn’t be clean.
Melva laughed. ‘Oh no. Lord, can you imagine if we encouraged the children to drink the spring water, eat the mushrooms, just generally live off the land? Red Rigg House would be sued within an inch of its life the moment one of you gets a tummy ache. No, love, you don’t have to drink the water, but here, take some with you as a blessing.’
The older woman dipped her hand back into the water and, with wet fingers, drew a shape on Ashley’s forehead. The water was shockingly cold. A few drops ran down Ashley’s nose and cheeks.
‘What did you draw?’ Ashley reached up with one hand, as if to touch her own forehead, then thought better of it.
‘A secret sigil,’ Melva said, grinning. ‘A sign so that the spirits will know you are Andraste’s own, blessed and kept safe by her. It’s protection.’
Malory, who had been very quiet up until that point, squeezed Ashley’s shoulder.
‘Melva showed me this spring a few years ago.’
After that, the three of them began to make their way back to the tree line. Red Rigg House was in the distance, almost invisible save for the flashes of colour peeking through the canopy. Ashley stood on a rock, caught for a moment between the house and the mountain behind her, a strange sense of new energy flowing through her.
I am blessed by the stream, she thought, still not sure what that meant. I am protected.
And then she hopped down and followed the others into the wood.