Witch Crag Read Free Page B

then got hold of Kita’s arm. “You must drive it off,” she said. “You’re a kind girl to save it but you mustn’t keep it tame.”
    â€œI know. I know it’s foolish, time wasting. Animals are here to feed us, not for our pleasure or to be our friends. But —”
    â€œIt’s more than that,” said Nada, urgently. “They’ll think you’re a witch.”
    â€œ What? Why?”
    â€œBecause you befriend beasts. Vild. . . Vild could do that. She had a little wild dog, a puppy. The headman found her with it – he . . . crushed the life out of it. In front of her. She grew hysterical. She was screaming, cursing. They tied her up and left her in one of the storage huts while they decided what was to be done. But in the morning . . . she’d gone.”
    â€œTo the witches.”
    â€œThey were sure of it.”
    Kita shuddered. “And you think I might be one.”
    â€œNo. No . It’s what others think, dearling. If she hadn’t gone . . . they’d’ve slit her for sure.”
    *
    Everyone knew the witches were evil. They had a fearful history. Abducting girls, or luring them with witchery; murdering any men who dared venture on to the crag slopes – there were sightings of their corpses hanging like grotesque puppets from the pine tree branches.
    Not long after Vild disappeared, three witches had been discovered lurking in the woods near the hill fort. They’d been dragged out on to the plains and slit as they stood, the headman himself executing one of them.
    Their bodies had been left for the dogs and crows, but that night their bloodstained garments had floated eerily down into the hill fort, causing panic and dismay among the sheep people, who were sure they were now under a curse.
    Rumours of witches inside the hill fort grew with the panic and swarmed around two women skilled in healing, despite all the good they did. Then, one dawn, the women were discovered crushing and boiling herbs. The headman ordered them to be tied up while he decided their fate. Which was to be taken outside the hill fort walls the following dawn, and slit.
    Soon afterwards, a marauding tribe intent on stealing sheep had besieged the hill fort. As their pact demanded, the horsemen had answered the bonfire summons and joined with the sheepmen; together they’d driven the marauders off. The fierce fighting had lasted until nightfall; the loss of life had been terrible.
    But less terrible, somehow, than what they saw from the hill fort walls when the sun came up the next day.
    Three great stakes had been driven into the ground on the edge of the battlefield, stakes with crossbars. On one side of each crossbar dangled a crazy bouquet of teasels, thistles and yellow flowering broom, all tangled up with ivy and vines. Beautiful in their way.
    On the other side of the crossbars three dead footsoldiers swung, hanging by a foot. Naked but for more vines and ivy coiled over them.
    A message from the witches.
    The headman had let out a roar of rage and disgust. He ordered the gates open and limped at speed on to the grasslands, several of his best men following, all of them ignoring their battle wounds. The wild dogs and crows still gorging on the dead had scattered at their furious advance. The soldiers had tried to reach the vine ropes that tethered the boys, but they were too high. So they’d hacked at the stakes, felled them like trees with their tragic fruit, then left them for the crows and the dogs.

    â€œI don’t think you’re a witch,” Nada had whispered, “but it’s not me who matters.”
    Â 

In the girls’ sleeping hut, Kita snuggled up to Quainy under the heavy sheepskins. “Oh, at last ,” she mumbled. “A bit of space at last. No one ordering you about. Quainy, pinch me if I doze off, if we don’t talk this whole day will have been crap. . .”
    â€œShhhh,” said Quainy, stroking