The Witches of Hackney Wick

The Witches of Hackney Wick

Tilly

In the gathering dusk, Tilly cycled along the towpath towards the Wick Woodland. Lycra-clad runners sped past her in the opposite direction, and she swerved close to the canal wall to make room. The briars growing along the wall caught in her hair, like fingernails clawing, but she kept going. Before night fell, she had to set up the ceremony site: unused for six months exactly, those long months since Lisbeth had passed away. Five full moons, and the sixth was about to rise.

She turned off the towpath into a copse, tucked next to the Lee Navigation, and the pieces of white quartz in her bicycle panniers rattled against the candle jars. It was darker under the knotted branches of the London plane trees, which leaned over the path as if reaching towards the watery canal. In the centre of the wood was a clearing ringed with hazel trees: the gathering place. Heavy smoke hung in the air and flakes of ash drifted across the path. Tilly leapt off her bicycle and ran towards the glade, her heart pounding. There was a large sign in the entranceway – Hackney Council – No Entry – site in constant use. Tilly stopped by a bramble arch, which she had trained to grow like a natural doorway to the clearing. It had been torn down and stamped to the ground. There were imprints of heavy boots in the dark earth. Who had done this, desecrated Lisbeth’s sacred place. Tilly’s hand shook, as she reached out to touch the severed ends of one tendril. She wanted to scream at the callousness of the act. There had been raves in the wood before, but none of the revellers with glowsticks had come near the glade. They had been respectful: a little messy and rowdy, crashing through other parts of the wood with portable speakers blaring, but never malicious. Not like this; this was a violation, purposeful and vindictive. And what would she do about the gathering now?

‘You’ll rise again,’ she whispered, tears prickling behind her eyes. Her heart ached for the lost brambles, but their roots ran deep into the earth, and they were hard to kill. She looked across the gloomy clearing; there was no one around to stop her going in.

Ducking around the sign, Tilly hurried into the glade where the smoke was rising from a bonfire and wreathing around the dark trees. It must have spread. Holding up the hem of her black maxi dress, she poked at the charred wood with the toe of her boot, then she stamped on the smouldering embers until the fire smoked no more. So reckless to leave it glowing. It wasn’t safe. Around the fire she found red splatters daubed on the burnt branches of the hazel trees. She followed the trail to the edge of the clearing, squinting through the gloaming. The crows were pecking at the ground, and a few downy feathers floated around them. Part of her didn’t want to look, but she waved her arms. As the crows took off, wheeling around the trees, she saw it – the fluffy carcass of a grey bird. A cygnet. Tilly shivered, unable to take her eyes off mangled body. Lisbeth had loved swans, and cygnets best of all. When Tilly was a child, Lisbeth had told her the story of The Ugly Duckling so often in the firelight that Tilly could still recite the first few lines. A sob burst from her throat. She had to do something. Running to the nearest unharmed tree – one of the birches – Tilly crouched down in its gentle shadow and scrabbled in the fallen leaves with her bare hands. When she reached the soft earth, she gritted her teeth and dug further, raking at the soil until she had made a shallow grave. Enough to keep off the wildlife. She buried the small body in the hollow, covering up the spot with leaves and twigs. Bowing her head, she touched her fingertips to the burial place.

‘I release the spirit of this cygnet, who never had the chance to become a swan, into the Universe.’ She stayed crouched there for a few moments, feeling the solidity of the earth beneath her, and a soft breeze ruffling her hair.

Then Tilly got to her feet and shook the dead leaves from the hem of her dress. If only she had brought some wine or herbs with her to cleanse the wood, but she had nothing. Instead, she walked widdershins around the glade, scowling at the empty crisp packets and cracked plastic glasses strewn across the ground and muttering quiet words to bring peace to the wood.

When she finished her revolution, she stopped and looked up at the corvids, who were watching her from a hazel tree. Most evenings in the wood, a murder of crows would gather, standing in circles in the fallen leaves, but in the dusk there were only three. One bird raised a dark beak, as if it was beckoning her, and flew to a branch at the farthest corner of the glade. She ran after it. Along the left-hand side of the canopy, the birch and hazel trees were blackened. By the crow’s foot she spotted a group of wicker circles: Os like gaping mouths hanging in the trees. Symbols that were unfamiliar to her. Scratched into the earth under the tree was a pentacle, a five-pointed star: a clear sign a spell had been cast there, in their sacred place. Rage pulsated through Tilly, and she grabbed a charred stick from the ground and poked at the nearest circle hanging in the tree until she dislodged the wreath and it dropped into a pile of fallen leaves. Around the wicker, someone had wrapped torn lengths of her beloved brambles. Her pulse beat wildly as she flung the edge of her black cloak around the circle, hoping its thick wool would stop the thorns from scratching her hands, and pulled it from the ground.

‘Come with me, little messenger,’ she hissed. The glowing curve of the full moon peeped out from behind a ribbon of clouds, illuminating the ruined thicket and the pentacle at her feet. She ground her heel into the soft ground, obliterating the star. Tilly caught her bottom lip in her teeth, glaring down at the mess of soil and leaves. From the hazel tree, the crow cawed to her, and she looked up to see it soaring over the trees into the darkening sky. The other two birds followed. It was nearly night, and Tilly had to go. As she left the clearing, she touched a scorched branch of the last hazel tree. She let out a cry, a sad and guttural sound like the caw of a crow, and she promised, ‘I’ll find out who did this.’

Tilly put the wreath into her front basket and cycled back through the Wick Woodland, along the towpath and into Victoria Park. She would only make it through the park before the gates were closed for the night if she was quick. She wished she had had time to mourn properly for the sacred wood, to begin to repair what was lost, but there were only a few hours before the gathering, and the wreath was weighing on her mind.

As she sped around the lake, two white swans took off heavily, flapping towards the Chinese Pagoda on the opposite side of the water. A dark figure – a man, Tilly guessed from his size – leant over the balcony of the pagoda. The white smudge of his face in the gloom was turned in her direction, watching her. What if she was trapped here? With him. The wind was singing in her ears as she raced to the end of the lake, her cloak streaming behind her. Up ahead, the wrought iron gate was still open, and she flew towards the exit.

A shining orb peered over the trees as Tilly left the park. It was a blue moon: the second full moon in the month of October. With the pull of this lunar event, the moment in the cycle was potent, coupled as it was with Samhain: the most magical time of the year. In the late evening, the coven would meet to honour Lisbeth’s memory. At Samhain, the veil between this world and the next grew thin, and the dead would speak to those who care to listen.

When Tilly reached The Hackney Herbalists, she slung her bicycle panniers over her right shoulder and pulled the wreath out of the basket with the edge of her cloak still wrapped around her hands. She pushed open the door of her herb shop with her hip, and the bell jangled sharply. Behind the counter, Nuala was standing on a high stool. The shelves above her were filled with bottles of varying sizes and shapes, and further above them hung a large mirror, where strands of devil’s ivy wound their way around the frame. Every so often, Tilly would take cuttings from the plant to cultivate in pint glasses on a smaller bookshelf in the corner, and, when they were ready, sell them to the customers who ambled into the shop in search of houseplants when they lived in basement flats. Devil’s ivy could survive in conditions that would shrivel the sturdiest of plants. The end of one of the tendrils danced by her apprentice’s right shoulder, a leaf touching her dark hair.

Nuala put a glass jar down on the counter, spinning it neatly into place as she jumped down from the stool. ‘Can I take something for you?’

‘I’m fine,’ Tilly said. She placed the panniers on the floor, then slid the wreath onto the countertop. ‘Have you set the fire and found the herbs I asked for?’ Earlier, Tilly had sent Nuala a quick message while stopped at a traffic light: On my way. We need to move the memorial and let the coven know. We haven’t got long! Please make sure you’ve got the fire going and have some bay leaves and protection herbs ready. As well as the coven’s tarot boat, which Tilly had inherited from Lisbeth, the former High Priestess had also asked her to take on training Nuala.

‘You’ve been working alone for far too long,’ Lisbeth had said after summoning Tilly to her garden to discuss the future of the coven. ‘I think you need someone in your life who wants to learn from you. It isn’t enough to give the coven scraps of information every so often. Passing on knowledge is part of the role. High Priestesses can’t go their own way, even though I know you think you’d prefer that.’ Lisbeth shrugged. ‘And Fionnuala’s a good little thing, she’s easy going, like water.’ Lisbeth was the only person in the coven who called Nuala by her full name: Fionnuala, and, in the same way, her daughter was always Cassandra, and Tilly was Matilda. Tilly had asked Lisbeth about the habit once, and Lisbeth had smiled, telling her, ‘To use something’s proper name is to have power over it.’ And this had stayed with Tilly ever since. Although she hadn’t started calling people by their full names, she reflected that it was important to her to know the precise botanical nomenclature for each plant she worked with; perhaps that was her own magical quirk. ‘And the girl’s really keen, which I like,’ Lisbeth added. ‘You’ll get on well together.’ By that time, Lisbeth was so weak that she could barely lift the pot of fresh mint and rose petal tea she had brewed, so Tilly didn’t argue. Instead, she busied herself with pouring out the cups, replacing Lisbeth’s fallen shawl around her shoulders, and listening to her guidance, which came in gusts whenever Lisbeth mustered the energy.

Training Nuala meant the young witch had to spend a year and a day with Tilly, through one revolution of the Wheel of the Year, learning about the sabbats and Tilly’s practice. Nuala had been one of Lisbeth’s projects; she was relatively new to the coven and to magic and, like The Fool in the tarot deck, she was fired up with excitement to begin her journey. Lisbeth had often adopted new witches, particularly those who were estranged from their families and far from home, welcoming them into the found family of the coven. Tilly had delayed starting Nuala’s training until just before Samhain, ostensibly so it could align with the beginning of the year, but really because she was worried about the extra work and the expense of paying Nuala’s wages when she was already struggling to make a profit. The rental costs on Well Street were impossibly high, and although Tilly foraged and grew as much as she could, she also had supplier costs. Before Nuala started, Tilly had found herself unconsciously committing to the process, digging out a spare copy of Culpeper’s Complete Herbal from the attic for her apprentice to use, and buying her a notebook decorated with ferns to take notes on the sabbats. Lisbeth was right: Tilly needed someone to cultivate and teach, a role she had avoided since she left academia two years ago to found The Hackney Herbalists.

‘The fire’s lit, and I think I’ve got everything.’ Nuala’s hands fluttered over the bottles she had arranged on the counter. ‘Bay leaves, those are the shiny green ones.’ Tilly raised her eyebrows. It wasn’t the most detailed description, but she let it go. ‘Then, for protection, I thought sage and maybe lavender. What do you think, have I got that right?’

‘Good options,’ Tilly said kindly. ‘You can bring those with you. Personally, I favour rosemary as a protection herb, and it burns well and quickly.’ Tilly checked the time on the watch that was hanging around her neck on a long silver chain. It had been a present from Lisbeth on her twenty-first birthday, and Tilly wore it for all the sabbats. ‘It’s six o’clock, so I think we’ve got just enough time to do the spell before the others get here.’

Nuala was staring at the grubby wicker circle with her head tilted to one side. Her wavy hair was so long it almost touched the wreath as she peered at it. ‘Is that for Samhain?’ she asked doubtfully.

‘No. It’s part of why we have to move the memorial. Another magical force has been active in the Wick Woodland, so we can’t meet there until it has been cleansed. From the state of the wood – all the symbols and the bonfire gone wild – I think it’s a coven.’ She pointed at the twisted object. ‘And they left this behind.’

‘Oh,’ Nuala breathed, her eyes wide.

‘But as I don’t know who left the wreath, I can’t return it, so we have to burn it with herbs that will limit its power.’ Tilly picked off a few dead leaves that were clinging to her hair, casting them on top of the circle. ‘Can you take the herbs into the garden, and check on the fire? I need to try and get hold of Cassie, and then let the others know about the change in venue.’

Nuala nodded as she gathered the glass bottles into her arms and disappeared out of the back door into the garden. Tilly found her mobile in the pocket of her cloak and called Lisbeth’s daughter three times before giving up. Perhaps Cassie was in a yoga class? Tilly tapped the edge of her mobile on the counter, frowning down at the dark wood. She had hoped Cassie would want to help with setting up for the sabbat, like they used to when they were young, but she didn’t want to be too pushy. Her friend was grieving. The iciness that had grown up between them melted when Lisbeth had first passed away. Cassie had let Tilly help with the arrangements for the cremation, cook for her, and tell the rest of the coven that Lisbeth was gone. But Tilly had felt the coldness return in recent weeks as Cassie refused her invitations for walks or dinner and ignored attempts to involve her in the memorial. Tilly wanted to help her childhood friend, but Cassie left her messages unread, or sent monosyllabic replies. The last thing she wanted to do was upset Cassie. Putting her mobile down, she rummaged beneath the counter for her laptop. She flicked onto the newsletter, then she hesitated. Should she go into a long explanation about the burning of the wood? Or say there might be a new coven around? Nothing was certain at this point, and she didn’t want to cause unnecessary alarm. In the end she went for “unforeseen circumstances”. Clicking send, she decided she would tell the coven more when she saw them.

Tilly picked up the wreath. Holding it gingerly, she went outside to find her apprentice. She was met by a blaze, crackling away in the centre of the garden on the small circular paving stone that she liked to use for bonfires. Nuala was standing over it, poking one of the logs with a stick. Her face was glowing.

‘Does it look all right?’ Nuala said. Tilly nearly bit back that it looked, ‘very much like a fire,’ but she stopped herself.

‘Perfect,’ Tilly deliberately put warmth into her voice. ‘Now stand back,’ she said, and Nuala leapt away. Then Tilly dropped the wreath into the hottest part of the conflagration. Sparks flew up, crackling onto the hem of her black dress.

‘Watch out!’ Nuala darted forward again.

But Tilly just smiled, and walked anti-clockwise around the bonfire, as close as she dared, feeling the warmth of the embers through her soles of her boots. Having completed the revolution, she turned to face the blaze. The brambles began to twist and shake, snaking towards their feet.