SonofaWitch! Read online

  “Do heads fall off a lot in this game?” It sure sounded like it to River, who had only just managed to get hers straight again.

  “They do if the person casting the spell doesn’t know what they’re doing, which leads me once again to point one. You don’t know your craft!” She walked around the kitchen, slamming cupboards and clattering plates. When she turned from the sink a moment later, with a scouring pad in one hand and a filthy cauldron in the other, she looked as if she was struggling to compose herself. “When your mother suggested you for our coven, packed your bags for you, and sent you over to me for the duration of the semester, I must say I had my reservations. I mean, you’re a lovely girl, River, don’t get me wrong, but you’re quite mad. I’ve had boxes of frogs less mad than you.”

  “Thanks?”

  “Not a compliment,” Evelyn countered.

  “Oh.”

  “Oh indeed,” Evelyn said. She carried the cauldron across to the kitchen table and began working at the grime caking its bottom and sides. As she scrubbed, she continued. “What you did today in class was irresponsible. You cannot use magic willy-nilly. Trust me. I’m old enough to be your great-great-great-grandmother.”

  That amazed River, for the High Priestess didn’t look a day over sixty. A good sixty, too, like Helen Mirren, not one of those sixties who tend to slip over in the High Street whenever there’s a spot of frost.

  “Then show me how to get him to like me,” River said, throwing up her hands with an exasperated sigh.

  Evelyn cough-chortled, but didn’t stop scrubbing at the cauldron. “You can’t make someone like you,” she said. “Not unless you had a pop—” She stopped, her eyes wide, then resumed working upon the cauldron as if nothing had happened. She even whistled a bit, her usual method to change the subject.

  “A pop—what?” River asked, for she wasn’t an idiot. Mad as a box of frogs, maybe, as well as a march hare and a wet hen, but stupid? Not on your nelly.

  “What?”

  “You were about to tell me how to make him like me.”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “You were. You said if I had a pop, and then cut yourself off because you don’t want to tell me.”

  “Don’t be so insolent, young lady,” Evelyn said. Before River could argue that she wasn’t being anything of the sort—which was probably not the best way to refute such a charge—Evelyn interrupted with, “Now, go to your room and work on your apple-exploding. We need some sauce for dinner, and Ernie will be back from work in an hour. He does like his apple sauce, that one.” She gave River a warm smile, as if apple sauce had played some important part in her and Ernie’s relationship. Thankfully it didn’t last long because River was far too young to hear about that kind of nonsense.

  She went up to her room where, the mood she was in, the apples didn’t stand a chance.

  “Can I get a pop—?” River said once again. By then, Caligari, of Caligari’s Emporium of Witchcraft and Voodoo (candles a specialty), was regarding her the way one might regard a four-sided triangle or a male midwife.

  “You’ve said that eight times now,” Caligari said. “I still haven’t the faintest idea what you’re going on about.” His frown said it all, and what his frown didn’t say, the taxidermy moose head hanging upon the wall behind him did.

  “I think she wants a pop—” said the moose head, in a tone that suggested Caligari was a simpleton of the highest order.

  “I heard what she said, Marv,” Caligari replied without taking his eyes off River. “Eight bleeding times.”

  “Then give her what she wants and send her on her way,” said the moose head. Then it sighed and rolled its glass eyes, which wasn’t a bad skill for something that had been dead for fifty years.

  “All I know is that it’s an unfinished word,” River cut in. “I overheard it from someone in my coven. Pop-something-or-other.”

  “What’s it meant to do?” asked Caligari, drumming his skeletal fingers on the counter as if he only had a minute left to live and she’d just booked him for a two-minute palm-reading. “This pop…?”

  “It makes people fancy you a bit, I think,” said River. She felt ridiculous. Why was she so desperate to make Dave Quinn like her? Besides the nice hair, the same-coloured teeth, the Bambi-eyes and trousers of an appropriate height? Apart from those things, he was just like all the other boys.

  Except he was perfect.

  “You want a poppet!” Caligari said, suddenly enthusiastic, for there was a good chance he was about to make a sale.

  “I want a poppet?” River asked.

  “She wants a poppet!” said Marv the Moose. “Get the girl a poppet!”

  Off Caligari went to fetch a poppet, ostensibly more excited than even River.

  “What’s a poppet?” River asked Marv.

  “Haven’t the foggiest,” said the moose head. “But it does sound quite nice. Like something you wear on your head in the wintertime, or something you eat when you’ve got worms.”

  “Here it is!” cried Caligari from the adjacent room. When he returned a moment later, he was carrying something small, which he placed down upon the counter. “You’re very lucky, River Everbleed. It’s the last one.”

  “You’re very lucky!” Marv the Moose said. River detected a hint of sarcasm. “You’re about to be the proud owner of a little creepy hessian person thingamajig. Go crazy!”

  River examined the object more closely, though not too closely just in case it leapt up and bit her on the nose. “So, this is a poppet?” she said. It had dark green buttons for eyes, and a crudely stitched zig-zag line for a mouth. A little farther down were two red X’s for nipples. “It must be so old. It looks old. Is it old?” She picked it up, turned it over, saw the MADE IN CHINA printed on its wash-tag, and looked up with suspicion at Caligari. “Seriously? Is this thing a toy?”

  Caligari held up both hands, placatory-like. “No, nothing like that… well, I get them wholesale from Nanjing, but it’s not where they’re from or how old they are; it’s what you do with them that counts.”

  Turning her attention back to the poppet, she said, “So what do I do with it? Do I just give it to Dave and hope he falls madly in love with me?”

  “You give that to Dave,” said the moose head, “and I can guarantee you’ll never see him again. Except in court.”

  River was confused. She hadn’t been this confused since the last episode of Lost. “What, then?”

  “One moment,” Caligari said, before whisking himself away to the back room once again.

  “He does that a lot,” said Marv the Moose.

  When Caligari came back, he was clutching a thick yellow book to his chest. He placed it down on the counter. “This is what you need. Poppets for Dummies. It’s all in there. Illustrated, too. Read that and you’ll know what you must do. Remember, I haven’t given you any advice about the poppet, any tips or tricks on how to use it. That book right there removes any onus from me.”

  “It removes your what?” asked the moose head.

  “My onus,” Caligari said, somewhat tersely. “You know what I said. You just wanted me to say my onus.” Behind Caligari, Marv was laughing his head off, or would have had it not been nailed to a mount.

  Suddenly excited to get the poppet and instruction book back to her room on Rune Street, River unzipped her purse and asked, “How much do I owe you?”

  “Ahem,” Caligari said, and when River looked up, she saw that he was pointing to a sign which said ‘We Accept Visa, Mastercard, Amex, or, if you’re a witch, you can smash us some apples. We do love us some applesauce!’

  “Putting her purse away, River said, “Oh! Lead the way to the apples, good sir.”

  RULE THREE: LEARN AND GROW

  River’s room was not much, but it was her own private quarters in a house in which she was frightened to pass wind on the offhand chance it upset Ernie’s allergies. Upon the walls—which was the best place for them, in River’s book—she had pinned a couple of po
sters. The usual stuff, really: boy band posters, witticisms, and inspirational quotations from leading figures (Anais Nin, Nietzsche, Russell Brand). Also on the wall, The Thirteen Goals of a Witch, a handy little list which she hadn’t looked at twice since Evelyn made her put it up. She only knew it was still there because it was right next to her favourite Tom Hardy poster. She had brought with her a television and DVD player, because she had yet to finish her box-set of The Big Bang Theory, and a pair of hair straighteners, but apart from that the room was as bare as a dole dosser’s food cupboard.

  Sitting on the uncarpeted floor, the poppet and instruction manual between her outstretched legs, River cracked her knuckles, picked up the book, and began to read.

  The gist of it was this: she could make anyone do anything she wanted, but first she had to tie the poppet to the person she wished to be represented by it, by reading aloud a simple naming ritual.

  Excited—perhaps a little too excited, for she was shaking like a shitting dog—River picked the poppet up from the floorboards and began to recite the words from the book:

  Little one, I give you life,

  I name you Dave Quinn,

  His body is your body

  His breath is your breath

  His passion is your passion

  His blood is your blood

  Though separate you were

  Now you are one.

  That, according to the manual, should have been it.

  When the poppet sat up in the palm of her hand, screaming at the top of its lungs—in what appeared to be Dave Quinn’s voice, no less—River had an inkling (as she was wont to do) something had gone terribly wrong.

  The poppet screamed at her, she screamed back, and that went on for some time.

  When they finally stopped screaming into each other’s faces, the poppet said, “What have you done to me? Where’s my soup gone? Why are you so bloody big?”

  River panicked and pressed a tremulous hand against the poppet’s mouth. “Quiet!” she said. “Evelyn’s downstairs. You’ll drop me right in it.”

  Beneath her hand, a muffled voice continued to witter on.

  Oh no! He’s so angry with me.

  “This wasn’t supposed to happen!” she said. She picked up the book and began flicking through it with her free hand. “I have no idea what went wrong.”

  “What do you mean, what went wrong?” the poppet asked, managing to break free of River’s tight grasp for a moment. “What have you done to me, River Overblood?”

  “Everbleed,” River said, dejectedly placing her head in her hands. “He doesn’t even know my last name. How could he ever love me if—”

  “You do realise you’re talking out loud,” the poppet said.

  But River was paying no attention. She searched through the book frantically, hoping to discover a chapter on full-consciousness-transference, but it wasn’t there. There was, however, a fifty-page section on how best to dress your doll to keep up with the ever-changing trends in fashion, with pictures of poppets in tiny waistcoats and Stella McCartney jackets. One even wore a meat dress, a-la Lady GaGa, but it was essentially a doll with a piece of bacon wrapped around it.

  “There has to be something,” River said. But there wasn’t. She’d messed it up so badly, even the writers of the Dummy manuals didn’t have an answer for her.

  “Put me down!” cried the poppet. “I can’t breathe. You’re squeezing the life out of me.”

  “That’s what love is!” River said, allowing the book to drop to the floor. “If I put you down, you’re just going to leg it.”

  The poppet crossed its tiny heart, or the place where it would have had one if it were a living organism. “I swear I won’t try to run away. I just need a moment to figure out what’s going on here.”

  With a heavy sigh, River considered what she knew. She had somehow put Dave into the poppet, and she had to somehow get Dave back out of the poppet. Other than that, she was completely flummoxed. “I’m going to tell you something now, Dave, and I really don’t want you to freak out, okay?”

  The poppet nodded.

  River sighed again. “I’m a witch,” she said. “A proper witch, like the ones they used to set fire to in Salem, not the ones that work at Blue Banana on Saturdays and burn incenses which are alleged to smell of the devil’s flatulence.”

  “A witch?” the poppet asked, in that way people so often do when told someone is a witch. If the poppet had eyebrows, River was sure she would have seen them knit together in confusion. “Oh! That would explain why your head was slightly on the skew-whiff in class yesterday.”

  “You noticed!” River exclaimed. Oh, how very embarrassing.

  “Of course I noticed,” said the poppet. “You spent the entire day with your ear on your shoulder. Some of the lads thought you’d had an accident with a hot-glue-gun. I told them you were just a bit on the weird side.”

  In that moment, River’s heart felt as if it had been licked by kittens and wrapped in cotton wool. “You did?” she asked, smiling.

  But then the poppet said, “That was before you put my soul into a voodoo doll, you crazy witch!” Order was restored. “Seriously? Who does that?”

  River pushed herself up from the floorboards, still holding the poppet tight in her fist. As she moved, Dave’s voice proceeded to tell her what it really thought of her. River was utterly dismayed none of it was complimentary.

  “I’m going to make this right,” she said, rushing across the room to where her backpack sat against a pile of The Big Bang Theory DVDs. She snatched the bag up and stuffed the poppet into it.

  “Eurgh!” the poppet protested. “There are girly things in here, and it’s dark. I refuse to be treated like a—”

  “Oh, pipe down!” River said, clipping the clasps into place. “Sheesh, I didn’t have you down as such a whiner.” It just went to prove that no boy was perfect, not even Dave Quinn.

  She made her way downstairs. Evelyn was bent over a steaming pot of something or other, but when she saw River with the backpack strapped to her, she straightened up and said, “Dinner won’t be long.”

  “I know,” River said. “It smells absolutely wonderful, but I’ve got to pop out for a bit. There are some things I need to take care of and, erm, I’ve got to take care of them right away.”

  From within the backpack, the poppet called out, “Mrs. Crowe! Mrs. Crowe, help me!”

  “What was that?”

  River elbowed the backpack, eliciting a groan of disapproval from the poppet within. “I said, Mrs. Crowe would you help me? When I get back from doing my thing, will you help me with my assignment? It’s, like, really tricky.” She hoped it was, because if it was simple, she was going to look like a right idiot.

  “Mrs. Crowe?” said Evelyn, her eyebrows arched. “River, I’m going to assume you have been drinking. Or smoking… oh, no! Please tell me you haven’t started on the wacky-tobacco! That’s it, isn’t it? You’re one of them now, aren’t you? One of those chavettes. Next thing, you’ll be wearing clear heels and telling me to STFU, or see you next Tuesday, whatever the hell that means.”

  “I’m not a chavette,” River said.

  “But you never call me Mrs. Crowe outside of classes.”

  River was halfway out the door when she called across her shoulder, “Bad habit, I guess.”

  RULE FOUR: APPLY KNOWLEDGE WITH WISDOM

  Caligari’s Emporium of Witchcraft and Voodoo (candles a specialty) was shut when River arrived a little after seven. A sign hanging in the window suggested she return between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. the following day and, if that wasn’t good enough, find a nice cliff and take a running jump off it. Neither option sounded appealing to her, and so she hammered upon the windows and door until Caligari appeared a moment later, dressed in nothing but a fez and a pair of boxer shorts.

  Strange how the other half lives.

  Through the glass in the door, he tapped at his bare wrist—he could afford a fez, but not a watch, apparentl
y—and said, “We’re closed, River.”

  Motioning to the sign, River nodded and said, “I know, but I’ve got a real problem and I need your help.”

  The glass in the door steamed up as Caligari huffed. “This is most unusual,” he said. “Does the High Priestess know you’re here?” Before River could answer he continued. “Of course she doesn’t. What was I thinking? You’ve got a problem which you can’t take to her, and so you’ve brought it here to me, because I am, am I not, one of the greatest shamans in the world?”

  River shrugged. She didn’t know where Caligari ranked—or whether there was any way to accurately rate shamans, like Uber drivers—but she doubted he was the best in the world. Maybe the best in Chiswick. “The greatest in the universe!” she said. “Now be a gent and let us in, would you? It’s colder than a witch’s tit out here. Like, literally.”

  Caligari disappeared for a few seconds and, when he returned, River was pleased to see he had thrown on a robe, though not exactly thrilled to see its print design was of himself wearing nothing but a fez and a pair of boxers. He unlocked the door, and once River was in, locked it again. River led the way to the counter so that she didn’t have to stare at the back of the vulgar-patterned robe.

  “Hey, River,” said the moose, head hanging halfway up the wall. “Gone sideways, has it? Thought it might.”

  “Take no notice of Marv,” Caligari said as he stepped behind the counter. “He’s just jealous we’re moving about, you know. On legs and things. So what can I do for you? You’re staring at the robe, aren’t you?”

  “It’s like looking at the Ark of the Covenant once it’s been opened!” River gasped. “Is my face melting? I feel like my face is melting.”

  Off Caligari went, and when he returned, he was wearing a more respectable paisley kimono. “Right, Miss Everbleed, can we get this over with? I’ve got a potato in the microwave and Sherlock’s about start.”

  Post-haste, River plonked the backpack down on the counter and unfastened the clasps. Before she even had a chance to take the poppet out, it was cursing and screaming and complaining about the smell.