Strengthen

I fell silent, filled with a terrible unease. Alice was using dark magic more freely than ever. She’d given Grimalkin power, and now she wanted to make a dead witch stronger. Where would it end? I knew that whatever I said, she’d go ahead and do it anyway. Our relationship was changing for the worse. She no longer valued my advice.

We glared at each other, but after a few seconds Alice spun on her heel and went back to Agnes. She crouched down, placed her left hand on the head of the dead witch, and spoke to her softly. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but Agnes’s reply was clear as a bell. She spoke just three words: “Yes, I promise.”

Alice began to speak in a singsong voice. It was a dark spell. Louder and louder, faster and faster she began to chant, until I looked around uneasily, sure that every dead witch in the dell would hear her and come toward us. We were now deep in witch territory; the three villages set in the Devil’s Triangle lay just a few miles to the south. There could be spies around, and the noise would alert them to our presence.

Agnes suddenly let out a bloodcurdling scream and jerked backward, away from Alice. She lay in the grass, moaning and whimpering, limbs thrashing and body spasming. Alarmed, I went over to Alice. Had the spell gone terribly wrong? I wondered.

“Be all right in a few minutes, she will,” Alice said reassuringly. “Hurts a lot because it’s such powerful magic, but she knew that before I started. Accepted that, she did. Agnes is very brave. Always was.”

B10 C3