A Long Day in Lychford (Lychford #3)(14)

“I think we really should try to find another word for ‘evil’ other than—” began Lizzie, who’d obviously seen the look on Autumn’s face.

“Words I use aren’t what’s wrong. What she did is what’s wrong.”

Autumn took a deep breath and shoved it all down inside her once again. “Okay. How do we get into these knots?”

Finally, Judith addressed her. Because she knew what she was about to say was arrogant and annoying. “You can’t get there from here.”

“Then how—?”

“Not by walking, not by knowing stuff. We need to be lost. Close your eyes, put your fingers in your ears, and start walking.”

“What about our, you know, other senses? The ones we got from the well?” asked Lizzie.

“They’ll be what get us there. But not if we let our normal senses get in the way. This is like . . . looking for summat really small. Summat that’s curled up inside summat else. We need to concentrate. And not. At the same time.”

Autumn did her best to follow those ridiculous instructions. At last she could do something. She put her fingers in her ears, closed her eyes, and took a hesitant step forward, muttering “one potato, two potato . . .” to drown out any external noise. She let her feet lead her, moving slowly, expecting every moment to walk into a tree. She didn’t know where Lizzie and Judith were. She realised, after a minute or so, that it was actually quite amazing that she hadn’t walked into a tree. The air around her seemed to have suddenly got colder.

When she reached one hundred potatoes, she decided now would be a reasonable time to stop. She opened her eyes and took her fingers out of her ears.

It was suddenly night.

She was still in the woods, but now all was illuminated by a full moon. Yeah, it had been a full moon last night. And it was a summer night, but it was still bloody freezing compared to the brilliant day she’d been in a moment ago, and she was only wearing a dress.

She looked round for Judith and Lizzie, who she’d assumed would be somewhere behind her, but . . . no. She took a couple of steps, called their names, and realised she would have seen them by now.

She was . . . alone here.

And she didn’t know how to get back. Because Judith hadn’t told her that part. Perhaps it would be just about retracing her steps? Yeah, okay, let’s go with that for now. So, she had to find if anyone else was in here with her. And hope like crazy that nothing . . . she refused to think of it as “dark” . . . that nothing with evil intent was in here too.

She hugged herself. So she’d successfully entered an area that still looked like it was part of the woods, but where it was still the night before. Because, right, time must be running more slowly in here. So this was . . . probably . . . hopefully . . . a knot that had got snipped off of their own world, and was somehow stuck in this previous time. How was she moving and breathing, then? Nope, can’t answer that yet.

She realised she now couldn’t hear the dance music at all. All was silence. So the illegal rave wasn’t in here. Tick that off the list.

What if Rory Holt was here? How would he react if he saw her? That would be an interesting conversation. Please let him be alive for that.

Cautiously, she started moving through the woods, listening, alert for any sign of movement. But all was still under that big moon. At least moving kept her a bit warmer. The sweat from all that running about was swiftly cooling off.

After a few minutes, she saw something strange ahead of her. Along the top of a ridge, a number of the trees had fallen, a great fan shape of them, with soil tumbling from their exposed roots, turning the climb ahead into a slippery slope. It was as if something had knocked them over. She heaved herself up, stepped carefully over the timber, crested the ridge, and saw that, somewhere in the hollow below, obscured by fallen trees, a cluster of artificial lights was shining. “Hello?” she called.

She thought she heard a sound in reply. Perhaps a call for help. Cautiously, Autumn began to pick her way down the slope.

*

Lizzie took her hands away from her face and looked round, startled at the sudden proximity of the dance music. Judith was standing at her shoulder. The sky was light with approaching dawn, the full moon of last night on the horizon. So, right, they’d gone back in time . . . or something. Ahead of them, flashing lights shone through the trees, the music blaring from that direction. She looked quickly around and then turned back to Judith. “Where’s Autumn?”

Judith looked, if anything, more shocked than Lizzie felt. “She . . . she must have walked far enough ahead to stumble into . . . another knot.”

“Right,” said Lizzie. “Okay. Can we get her back?”

Judith shook her head. “When we unpick this, iron out the boundaries, we’ll find her then, maybe . . .”

Why was the old witch suddenly looking so uncertain? “So if we just went back the way we came, then walked as far as she did—?”

“You don’t just go backwards to get out. It’s a whole other thing.”

“What other thing?”

Judith’s face was now a complete blank. Lizzie wondered for a moment if she’d stopped recognising her. Was this the toll for what she’d done today? If so, it had come at entirely the wrong moment. “Complicated,” Judith said, finally.

Lizzie was damn sure she wasn’t going to take more than a step away from Judith before she explained. She wanted to say if Judith hadn’t been too angry to talk directly to Autumn she might have done the responsible thing and told both her apprentices how to get out of what she was leading them into. “Couldn’t you have stopped her?”