Willow opened up the carpetbag as surreptitiously as she could, her hand searching as he spoke … Ybaer had said she’d know when the time was right and Willow did. From inside the carpetbag she grabbed hold of the stealth sprig and instantly disappeared.
‘What on Great Starfell?’ cried Silas.
Willow, realising that he couldn’t see her, made her way slowly and carefully towards him.
She grabbed the potion bottle out of his hand, and flung it against the wall, where it spilled its contents harmlessly, the smell making them wrinkle their noses.
But all too soon she was visible again.
‘Seize her!’ cried Silas and one of the guards ran forward.
Essential raised her hands and froze the guard. Fortunately for them whatever spell Silas had used to protect himself against magic he obviously hadn’t shared with his fellow Brothers.
‘We’ve got maybe a second. Do something!’ shouted Essential as the frozen Brothers stared at them with murder in their eyes.
Willow’s eyes fell on the shaggy carpetbag. She stared at the greenish orange kobold, and thought hard. They said if you insulted a kobold enough … they would explode.
‘Oswin, I have to tell you something before we die. I know that your father was a cat, and your mother wasn’t really a kobold,’ she lied.
‘WOT?!’
He turned a bright pumpkin colour, his tail electrified in fury. His huge orb-like eyes blazing white-hot heat.
Willow spoke fast, choosing words that would upset him most. ‘A common tabby, wasn’t she? And it was really just your grandmother who was a kobold … so you’re not really, technically even a monster.’
‘I AM THE MONSTER FROM UNDER THE BED!’ he roared.
‘NO, you’re just a cat!’
‘CAN A CAT DO THIS?’ he bellowed, just as the Brothers unfroze and raced towards them.
Willow threw the bag straight at them. ‘Duck!’ she told Essential and Sometimes.
There was a giant explosion. Willow’s hairy carpetbag burst apart with a bang, with Oswin glowing in the centre like a fireball. The roof caved in, and the Brothers went flying backwards.
There was an angry shout from Silas. ‘Get them – get that girl!’
Abruptly a loud roar rent the air, and the floor began to shake. Something large, heavy and ferocious had landed on the already disintegrating roof. Bits of tile and plaster rained upon them from above. Amidst the falling debris Willow saw a dragon.
‘Feathering!’ she cried.
The dragon eyed them and said very calmly in his deep rumbly, windy voice, ‘Afternoon … We had a feeling that you might be needing us?’
From behind his great wings she could see a slightly nervous-looking troll give a bashful sort of smile. Calamity. The troll was holding the hag stone, and said, ‘Turns out Wolkana wasn’t that far away; we saw it with this, and it helped us enter. Whatever magic protects this place doesn’t work on hag stones!’
‘Brilliant!’ cried Willow.
A roof tile had clipped Silas on the head and a streak of blood trickled down his face. Despite this he lunged for Willow. ‘Ignore them! Get the girl,’ he commanded.
The remaining Brothers hesitated, so Silas went to Moreg Vaine’s still body and took a knife from his cloak. He stared intently at Willow and said, ‘Surrender or she dies here and now.’
Willow thought hard. In years to come she would still wonder at what she’d done, but she did the only thing she could. She closed her eyes, raised her hands to the sky and summoned the lost spell.
And magic, the magic of Starfell, sat up for a moment, as if it had been listening with one ear till then. And it drew closer to the small girl with hope in her chest, who was trying to fix things, and it decided to take a chance. And, to Willow’s utter surprise, the spell flew out of the golden box, and landed in her outstretched hand with a purplish glow.
‘You leave me no choice,’ said Silas, and he stabbed Moreg beneath the ribs.
Willow watched as Moreg’s blood pooled on her dusky robes, the colour draining from her face, all life trickling out of her.
‘NO!’ she shouted, racing towards the witch.
The pain from her wound woke Moreg up at last, but not for long – she was fading fast. Moreg gasped for breath. ‘Do it, girl. Remember, practical makes perfect.’
Willow’s lips trembled. ‘B-but I can’t.’
‘Yes, you can, you know you can,’ hissed the witch. ‘Recite the counter-spell.’
Willow’s eyes filled with tears as she watched Moreg’s body start to shudder. Time was running out.
Willow took one last look at Moreg’s body, tears coursing down her face, then she read the counter-spell on the scroll aloud as quickly as she could.
‘What was taken now restore,
Put back what was lost before,
Return the day to its rightful space,
Time before time and past in place.’
A blast of silvery light knocked her off her feet, the scroll crumbled to dust in her hand, and suddenly everyone around her was spinning inside a reeling tornado.
She whirled passed Silas, his face dark and incredulous. Past Feathering, and Essential, Calamity, Oswin and Nolin Sometimes, and then suddenly it all went black, as black as night.
21
Yesterday Again
She was in her cottage garden. There was a familiar crowd of people snaking along the low wall outside.
Willow blinked. What had happened? Why was she here? Where was Moreg? Nolin Sometimes? Feathering? Essential Jones?
In her confusion she heard skinny Ethel Mustard whine a strangely familiar whine. ‘I heard witches weren’t meant to ask for money in the first place … They’re not meant to profit from their gifts,’ she said.
Willow’s mouth fell open. Hadn’t this already happened? Her brain felt like a puddle of mush as she tried to make sense of what was happening. Through the fog she heard Juniper round on Ethel. ‘Who told you that?’
Then slowly, painfully, and all at once the truth hit her like a knife in her belly. She doubled over, gasping for breath, hot tears sliding down her face, as all the memories of the day that had been taken away came flooding back.
It was what she’d been fighting all along. What she’d known deep in her heart had to be true.
When she looked up, eyes glistening, she saw that everyone was wearing black, and, as if from a void, she heard Flora Bunton’s reprimand. ‘This isn’t the time to be bringing up such a thing … We’re here to show our support for the girls on this sad day as they say goodbye.’
Willow closed her eyes and her chin wobbled as she remembered it all … the day that Silas had taken away from her, from all of them.
The day had started off like any other Tuesday. She got up, poked Oswin to stop his snores from under the bed, and then she got dressed in her pond-green dress, the one that bubbled in crooked lines at the hem because it had been sown by Granny Flossy’s unsteady hands.
Breakfast was a slice of almost stale bread and a lick of her favourite jam and butter. Then she went outside to collect the eggs from the hens, which was when she saw Granny Flossy sitting in the garden chair outside. And suddenly, just like that, it was the saddest Tuesday of Willow’s young life.