PAISLEY

BUNDANOON, AUSTRALIA, PRESENT DAY

I have just bought a loaf of spelt bread from Paddy the baker when I walk outside into the glare of the day, right into the path of Annabel Hooper. In something of a strange ambush, Emily is coming down the street from the other direction and we all land together on the footpath in an awkward scrum.

I try not to look at Mrs Hooper. She frightens me. I move around her and only accidentally lock eyes with her. She glares at me, which is hard to ignore. She has a pinched face, like a sack that’s been tied up at the lips, lips that hide a well-oiled tongue that slips effortlessly over a good gossip. Her eyes are round black currants. She has pop-up cheekbones, a little feline nose and her mouse-fur-brown hair is moulded into some kind of war-era curled bob.

Emily has stopped and is looking at us, from one face to another.

‘Hey, Paise,’ she calls and grabs my elbow, steering me away, speaking far too loudly and melodramatically. ‘I wish I’d brought a jumper. It’s freezing, huh?’

It’s a still, brisk, cold Saturday morning. I look up at the cloudless blue blanket of sky and watch a procession of galahs sweeping across it.

‘Well, that was awkward!’ Emily says as we walk along the low wooden bridge over the train tracks. We patter past the hotel, eerily silent at this time of the morning, north along Erith Street and cross at the top bridge before heading back toward my place. We have just done a massive detour around town to get away from Mrs Hooper.

At home Mum is still in bed although I know she is probably not asleep. She has black rings around her eyes and has complained to me almost every morning about how little sleep she is getting.

Em and I share a breakfast of toast and jam and Weetbix. My mother joins us in the kitchen. In the space of a few weeks she has become smaller, lighter. She is not eating properly and looks as thin as a broom handle. I sit in front of my bowl of cereal watching the dust motes stirring the sunlight that streams through the kitchen window over the sink. I scrape my spoon around the bowl one final time to round up the last milky grains and then let it clatter to the bottom of the plate.

After breakfast Mum comes to the table carrying a heavy wooden box. I look up at her. ‘Emily and I are going to cram for the history exam this morning,’ I say.

‘Before you girls begin, I want to have a word with you, Paisley,’ Mum says with uncharacteristic seriousness. ‘Do you mind waiting for Paise in her bedroom, Emily?’

Now I am really intrigued. Emily looks from Mum to me, grins, swings a plait over her shoulder and goes to my room. I don’t doubt for a second that she’s pressed up against my closed door listening to every word.

Mum sits at the table with the mystery box and sighs, looking at me intently.

‘What?’ I give a nervous laugh. ‘You’re freaking me out.’

She slowly, almost ritualistically, opens the clasp on the box and lifts the lid, taking out a small parcel wrapped in fine woollen fabric. She places the parcel on the table in front of her.

‘What is it?’ I ask in a whisper, sensing that this is something momentous.

‘It’s the family book,’ she says softly.

I feel my face begin to tingle at the curiousness of it all.

She begins to lovingly unwrap the woollen fabric and reveals a leather-bound book. It must be the oldest-looking book I’ve ever seen.

‘What is this?’ I say breathlessly.

‘This is the Systir Saga, the book of your sisters.’

I give an incredulous little snort. This is some witchy sisterhood thing, I think.

‘Paisley, this is your direct maternal bloodline running back to the Goddess. I was going to give it to you when you had your first daughter, but I’ve been so proud of how you are dealing with all this that I wanted to share it with you now.’

She passes it across the table to me. I hold my breath as I open the strange, heavy, oily pages. The ink looks reddish brown, almost like blood. I see careful scrawls of names and places. The last name in the book is mine.

Paisley Muller-McLeod – Katoomba.

Before me there is my mother’s name.

Kirsten Jane McLeod – Gosford.

And before her name, my maternal grandmother’s.

Fiona McKechnie – Edinburgh.

I read over the names, turning the pages backward. They become fainter. Some are almost unintelligible. They fan out into branches, some stopping altogether. It looks like a full board of Scrabble. All these strange women’s names and foreign places. It takes my breath away. It is a journey of my DNA and I find myself crying, tears running down my cheeks at the enormity of what my mother has shared with me. It just hits me like a bus. I’ve been holding in my emotions for the last fortnight and they just erupt all over my face.

‘Oh, Mum,’ I say. ‘This is priceless. The most amazing thing I have ever seen.’

‘Look after it.’ She smiles. ‘There are so many forgotten stories in there, stories that are attached to those names.’

I feel a wave of excitement, a thrill. This book must contain hundreds of adventures and as many tragedies, none of which we will never know.

‘They are your witchy ancestors,’ Mum says.

‘Well my female ancestors.’ I smile.

‘Remember, Paise,’ Mum smiles back, ‘a witch is just a woman who is—’

‘I know … I know … wise, intuitive, trusting, compassionate and honourable.’

She looks at me through her red-rimmed eyes and takes both of my hands in hers. ‘Through all of this ordeal with the Hoopers, darling, we must never stop trying to be all of those things.’

My whole life I have run from Mum’s Wiccan beliefs, tolerating them but being kind of embarrassed by them, too. No one will ever convince me that a rock or a crystal can take away grief, or that the stars can tell me who I will marry. I firmly believe in science and logic. But right now, looking at this book that is made up of my mother and me and all the mothers that came before us, I know what she means when she speaks of the witch in every woman. I go to her and lean down to take her in my arms.

‘I love you, Mum. It will all be okay. We have each other. I’ll always be here for you. You’ve made me feel … just a little bit … like a witch now. And it feels kind of nice.’

The following Monday morning, Ben Digby bustles straight up to me at the bus stop and I feel my skin prickle.

‘Isaiah Hooper’s gone missing,’ he says, panting with the thrill of this information. ‘He wasn’t in his bed this morning and his mum’s gone spare. Constable Amy was around all the local boys’ places this morning asking if we’d seen or heard from him.’

I snatch a look at Emily as she fumbles for her bus pass, her lips pressed together in a straight line.

‘Shit.’ I frown and I wonder whether the town’s going to blame this on Mum, too.