Doctor Who Cats Cradle Witch Mark
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Contents Prologue...................................................................................... .......................3 1: Arrivals ..................................................................... ................................12 2: Strange Beasts .................................................................................. .........23 3: Missing Persons .................................................................. ......................38 4: Arawn's Wheel .............................................................................. ............44 5: An Unexpected Party ............................................................. ...................57 6: A Journey in the Dark ................................................................. ..............62 7: Unwelcome Visitors ............................................. ....................................75 8: Three Is Company ................................................................................ .....79 9: Rissole Time .................................................................. ...........................87 10: Many Meetings .............................................................. ...........................91 11: Corn Circles...................................................................... .......................101 12: Fire and Water .................................................... ....................................105 13: The Land of Shadow ...................................................................... .........114 14: There ... ............................................................................ .......................118 15: Dagda's Wheel .......................................................... ..............................124 16: Altered Flesh .................................................................................. .........131 17: ... And Back Again .................................................................................. 139 Prologue Bathsheba watched motes of dust dancing in the shaft of sunlight and let forth a heavy sigh. It earned her a stern glare from Siân but that didn't make the sentiment behind it any less heartfelt. After fifteen days of solid rain, pounding the earth around the farm into a fury of mud, the sun had emerged from behind the heavy layers of cloud and Bathsheba had, found herself confined to the hay barn along with all the other children. It confirmed that this always happened, though Bathsheba had a long enough memory to recall being grateful at the sight of the raven-haired teacher strolling towards the farm at harvest time. Then Siân's lessons had brought Bathsheba a longed-for respite from h r fumbling attempts, doomed to failure, at using the scythe. The scythe had been her father's idea. It needed two arms to wield the instrument properly, two good arms. To the shaft he had attached a leather thong which could be tightened around her right wrist and with her left arm she was just about able to swing it. But her efforts were useless; the blade either swung too low because she couldn't support it or it merely flattened the stalks. The exercise was intended to strengthen her right arm, which had been withered at birth, but gradually it became apparent that it did no such thing and so she was given a break from that work. Father had then given her the job of going round the field, after the grain had been flailed from the stalks and the hay stacked, to pick up all of the stray grains which had fallen. This job too was tiresome and, though it provided Bathsheba with time to free her imagination, before a very great time she began to hate tramping up and down fields. Her attention turned back towards Siân. What had she been talking about? The last thing she could remember was something about Dinorben, the fortress where the council, the Tuatha De Danaan, held their meetings. Bathsheba had never been there, although at most it must be only two days' ride away. She had seen pictures of the circle which was guarded night and day by General Nuada and his soldiers and she had heard stories, whispered late at night, about exactly why General Nuada and his soldiers guarded the circle so closely. And though she had never really left the farm her mind had ranged far and wide throughout the kingdom of Tír na n-Óg; to the Sidhe on the far western shores, to the ferocious waves which beat eternally against the hospitable islands in the distant north, to the Fomoir who inhabited the dark mountains to the south, just visible if you stood on top of the chimney - a risky business for someone who could only cling on with one hand and who couldn't run very fast if Father caught her up there. Siân was talking about Goibhnie now and, judging by the expectant look on her face, she had just asked a question. Bathsheba looked around wildly, hoping that she wouldn't be called upon to answer it. To her surprise Gabby the eldest pushed himself to his feet and began to mumble in his usual manner. 'Speak up, Gabriel,' Siân told him, 'so that we can all hear you. It’s no good talking to the ground.' Gabby blushed furiously and lifted his head up to stare fervently at a hayfork, hanging on the wall behind Siân. Now his words tumbled over each other in their eagerness to get out of the constriction of his throat, but at least Bathsheba could hear him. She never tired of hearing Gabby talk about Goibhnie, for Goibhnie was a god and one day she hoped to meet him. ‘Please, Siân, I saw Goibhnie when I was very young. He were tall, taller than Father, even taller'n the man who came to tell us that Huw was dead. And he had on a hat so's you couldn’t see his face and he come on a big flying rock. He poked something into our sheep because Father said he din't want them to get no sick no more. That was before any of this lot was born so I’s the only one that's seen 'im.' When .he had finished, Siân gave him a warm smile and told him to sit down again, then she turned to look for something in her bag. As she bent down her long black hair tumbled about her shoulders and this set Bathsheba off thinking again. Bathsheba had always looked with envy upon Siân's hair. Not because it glistened in the sunlight, or because it always smelled so nice. Not because it was black whilst Bathsheba's was a thin mousy colour. No, the reason for her envy was that Siân had such long flowing lengths. Bathsheba's hair was cut close to the skin and always had been. Nobody had cared to tell her why this was so, but eventually she had been given an answer of sorts by one of the other girls. 'It's in case you're a witch,' she had been told. A witch! They thought she might be a witch. But how could they? She had never done anything bad, or had she? She had spent long hours thinking about it, but it was only when she had seen Father throw the small foal, with skin over its eyes and misshapen legs, on to the constantly burning fire at the back of the farm, that the reason had come to her. It was all because of her withered arm. As far as her parents were concerned it was a deformity and for all they knew she could have been born deformed because she had witch's blood in her. Bathsheba shivered at the thought of the other burning which she had encountered and which had left an even deeper impression on her. On the far side of the farm there was a wood which, out of curiosity, Bathsheba had one day wandered into. As she ventured into the cool green silence a pungent smell assailed her nostrils. She walked further and further and the trees drew closer around her until she had found herself having to force her way through sharp brambles and sweet-smelling bracken. Eventually she had stumbled out into a clearing. The ground, littered with skeletal leaves and fragile branches, was scorched and blackened. Smoke rose where the debris still smouldered - little wonder, for a strong fire had burnt here. In the centre of the clearing there was a thick stone post, engraved deeply with signs and wardings against the power of Arawn. The markings were encrusted with charred remains and a light powdering of ash clung to the surface of the post. Bathsheba moved around the very edge of the clearing until she could see the other side of the post. She grimaced in horror at the sight but a morbid fascination prevented her from looking away. A blackened corpse hung there, suspended by chains clamped tightly around its wrists. What skin there was left was shrivelled, shrunken, but for the most part it had burnt away, leaving crisp muscles and brittle bones exposed to the air. But the horror did not end there, for just as Bathsheba had felt the bile rising to her mouth, the head lifted upwards, white eyes agape, and the mouth fell open as if to scream. But rather than sound it was a torrent of oily black smoke that poured out. Sitting in the haybarn, Bathsheba's mouth felt dry as she remembered running as fast as she could away from the apparition and finally, when she could run no more, falling to the ground and fainting in a pool of her own sick. She had woken on her bed in the farmhouse with concerned faces looking down at her but afterwards no one mentioned the incident. She had begun to wonder if it had all been a bad dream, but had ventured into the wood again and had found the stone post. No horror hung there, but the circle of sickly looking grass which surrounded it was more than enough to convince her of the truth of what she had seen. And she knew that the stone post was the fate which awaited her if there was any indication that she too might be a witch. That was the reason why her hair was regularly shorn by her loving mother - so that at the first sign of a darkening of the skin midway between the nape of her neck and the lobe of her ear, she could be burnt without hesitation before she could cause any harm. Her family were watching for the mark of the witch. She gave another wistful look at the small patch of blue sky just visible through the circular window above the barn door and then tried to concentrate on the lesson. She slipped easily into daydreaming again and before she knew it the lesson was over and she was following the others out of the barn.