Sticky Witch VI
Good intentions are deadly
Rosen is part of a team of Material Practitioners (that’s a ‘witch' without the religious bit), engaged in house restoration, protection, and charmwork. Something magical is rippling through the ground in SouthWest England, toppling houses and henges alike. She’s at the Avebury Henge investigating with her team. Catch up with last week’s episode or read (for free) from the beginning.
We ran, me outpacing John. In a magical surge, the best place to be is at ground zero. You were more likely to survive and fix the problem instead of being caught in the fallout.
Three coven members were motionless on the ground; another was sobbing. As I ran past, one of the watchers bent over and vomited. The rest were clustered around the couple in the centre in a cacophony of noise or fleeing towards the village.
“No! Noooo! Stay with me –!”
“Get the first aider!
“Anyone got a working phone?! We need an ambulance!”
I passed the nearest stone and stumbled as the power surge hit me. For one moment, I could feel and see everything in hyper-detail: the grain of the stones, the stubble of grass, the stink of stomach acid and the edge of panic in everyone's voices. My own stomach rebelled, and I gagged. I dug into my pocket for my quartz rosary, trying not to vomit. I started threading them through my fingers.
“One for sorrow, two for joy…”
It didn’t matter what I said at that moment in time, the key was to focus. I exhaled and stepped forward, matching my footsteps to my breath and my breath to each bead.
“Three for a girl, four for a boy…”
I heard John gasp behind me, but I didn’t turn around. This was a tightrope walk with the power fizzing in my blood. The group were up ahead, and I saw that the man had slumped to the ground. Their leader – a weather-beaten woman with a high forehead and nose – had the presence of mind to start CPR on him. Her mouth was moving rhythmically, like my own.
“Five for silver, six for gold…”
I was there! Their faces turned towards me, blank and unstaring, including the screaming girl in the pink felt hat at the centre.
Wait – a girl? The woman I’d seen previously was at least fifty. I glanced over at the man, his face partially obscured by the hood of his coat. He was grey-faced with sunken cheeks and looked like he was ninety.
Oh crap.
“Seven for secrets never to be told,” I chanted out loud as I dropped down beside the almost-corpse. The head witch (Cecelia, according to John) gave me a look of gratitude.
“Staying alive, staying alive,” she said in her sing-song chant. I tried not to laugh. If Bee Gees got us through this, I would send the band members thank you cards.
I reached out, hesitated, and then touched the man’s skin. Mike and Em could lecture me about this later. If I survived.
The magic fizzed up at the contact, and it was all I could do to grit my teeth and hold onto my beads. I felt it pour out of me, pattering across the man’s skin, into his muscles, veins and bones. I was looking for movement. For life.
There! A flicker of a spark. His heart stuttered and his lungs heaved.
I licked my lips. I could do this. I was a material practitioner; this was just a pump problem. Don’t think about the fact it’s flesh and blood.
I upped the pressure, feeding the magic around his heart. It bound up the fraying tendons and skated around a clot in the large, left vein. I didn’t have the finesse to dissolve it, which was secondary to getting any blood around his system at all. There was that spark and my magic, squeezing, in-out-in-out…
“Beat,” I said tersely. “You know how: beat!”
John’s hands moved into my vision, obscuring my view. He plucked at my sleeves.
“Rosen…”
“No!” I almost shouted. “He’s got a chance. I’ve just got to get him going again…”
“He’s gone, lass.”
No, not possible. He was upright and alive, a minute ago. The heart stuttered under my touch. Its side wall bulged. I kept squeezing, forcing the blood out and around his system. Sooner or later, that spark would ignite.
The heart’s right chamber gave way, rupturing in a gush of blood and tissue that I could taste at the back of my throat. With nowhere left to go in the corpse, the magic fled back to me in a seething mass of sparks.
I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t do anything except gasp and hope my own heart was strong enough to survive it.
Just before I blacked out, I thought; “Mike’s going to kill me.”
*
I woke up in the recovery position and winced. The hand tucked under my face was sticky with drool, and my legs had gone to sleep.
“Take your time getting up,” said someone above me.
I turned over and blinked at the oak-and-plaster ceiling. “Where am I?” I croaked.
The paramedic leaned over. He was a blur of green uniform that resolved into a smiling face with brown eyes and scruffy stubble. He looked tired.
“You’re at The Red Lion,” he said with a hint of twang. “I’m Liam and we’re waiting for another ambulance to arrive. Are you feeling any nausea, dizziness or chest pain? The coven swore you had a magic heart attack.”
“No, no – I’m fine now. It hurt at the time. The guy…?”
“Pronounced dead, I’m afraid.”
I sat up on my elbows, feeling light-headed and foolish.
We were in a small functions room, adjacent to the bar. It smelt of stale beer, woodsmoke and ether. Someone had done magic recently in the room. I had been plonked in a stretcher across the back wall benches, with a blanket.
Mike burst in through the connecting door, accompanied by a blast of noise. People in the other room sounded upset.
“Rosen,” he said grim as a coal mine. “Thank Gods you’re alive, you fucking lunatic. What were you thinking?”
I winced.
“I wasn’t,” I admitted. “Sorry.”
Mike leaned in, the lines etched in his face.
“You do realise, if you had died, John could’ve been charged with manslaughter, as the senior practitioner on-site?”
I looked away. Mike continued in the same quiet voice.
“That’s before we get to the fallout on your family or what it would’ve done to the firm…”
I burst into tears.
It was embarrassing – I never cry – but the novelty shut Mike up, and a moment later, I was wrapped up in a bear hug.
“Think before you leap next time,” he said gruffly in my ear. “Just because you can handle high magic flows doesn’t mean you have to.”
I detangled myself from the embrace. “Listen to the old guys,” I said sniffing. It was the office joke, but no less accurate for that.
“We’re old for a reason,” Mike said, still serious. “We’ve been through it, so you don’t have to, and hopefully one day, you’ll be saying the same to your baby mage who thinks she’s immortal.”
If I could sink through the floor, I would have.
“I’m going to check at the gate again,” the paramedic said uncomfortably. “Since the radios are haywire around here and we can’t drive vehicles in. Do you think you could walk a short way, Mrs Pearce?”
“I’ll carry her”, Mike said, his face daring me to argue.
I kept quiet.
The guy left, and Mike took a minute to run through the post-spell reflex list. Eyes, nose, fingers, toes – it’s amazing what can go wrong after a magical surge. One of John’s friends had walked home after a coven event and only realised he’d fused two toes together when he took a bath.
“Is everyone OK?” I asked after a pause. Mike heaved a sigh.
“John’s got through two brandies after yelling at Cecilia. The rest of the group walked to the barn, where they are giving statements to the police. Latika’s looking after the transfigured girl – ah - woman. It’s hard to know what to call her when she’s fifty-seven going on seventeen. We’ve also got a farmer coming with two Shire horses to pull Liam’s ambulance out of the village. Would you like a drink?”
“Yes, please. I thought emergency services were allowed to drive in?”
Mike shrugged. “Usually, yes. But right now, the stones are haywire and shorting anything with a battery. We carried you here.”
“I need to apologize to John.”
Mike stood up. “Yeah, you should. I’ll call him in.”
“Thanks for not biting my head off.”
Mike rubbed his chin, half-smiling for the first time. “I don’t have to. Em’s on her way over.”
I fell back on my makeshift cot and put my hands over my face. “Oh, Jack-in-the-Green! You called her?”
“It was Em or your mother. If you’ve got magical damage, she’s the one to fix it.”
With that parting shot, Mike left the room.