Sisters of shadow, p.1
Sisters of Shadow, page 1
Sisters of Shadow
Katherine Livesey
One More Chapter
a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021
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Copyright © Katherine Livesey 2021
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Cover design by Andrew Davis © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021
Map © Laura Hall
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Katherine Livesey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
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This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
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Source ISBN: 9780008467708
Ebook Edition © September 2021 ISBN: 9780008467692
Version: 2021-07-15
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Author’s Note
Sisters of Shadow: The Playlist
Acknowledgments
Thank you for reading…
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About the Author
Books by Katherine Livesey
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About the Publisher
Where sunless rivers weep
Their waves into the deep,
She sleeps a charmed sleep:
Awake her not.
Led by a single star,
She came from very far
To seek where shadows are
Her pleasant lot.
— Christina Rossetti, ‘Dream Land’
Prologue
Nobody really noticed when Alice Blackwell disappeared. The ‘witch-girl’, as the village folk came to know her, lived alone in a hut nestled amidst tall ferns and ancient oaks in the mountains that surrounded Alder Vale. No one knew where the hut was exactly, or whether Alice lived in a hut at all, but they felt sure that she was the kind of girl who would live in one, and so the presumption had become a widely circulated fact. She was strange, you see. Only a strange person would choose to live a quiet existence away from the chatter and bustle of the town. At least, that’s what they whispered to one another.
The only soul in the entire town who did know where Alice resided was a girl of a similar age who made the trip through moss-covered forests and up into the cold mountain air to visit Alice several times a week. She usually brought little bundles of fresh herbs, baked goods, and an apple or two, and they would spend hours talking and laughing before the girl disappeared back down into the valley, leaving Alice alone again.
Contrary to what the townsfolk whispered, Alice lived a solitary life not by choice, but because she had no family to speak of. Her father and mother had raised her in this cabin. They’d loved her, cared for her, and cherished her for the first six years of her life. Then one day they’d kissed her goodbye and ventured out on a short but routine hunting trip.
And never returned.
Loneliness had stopped tugging at her heart years ago, very soon after she started receiving visits from the girl from Alder Vale. Something else tugged at her heart though, and it tugged with relentless abandon. The irony of the townsfolk calling Alice the ‘witch-girl’ was that Alice was sure that she possessed no real magic. She knew very little about her lineage, except for what was in her beloved grimoire that sat proudly on her crooked bookshelf. It was an ancient leather-bound tome, filled with spells and incantations, that she’d inherited from her mother, who had inherited it from her mother, and so on. For Alice, this book proved that she came from a line of women who were all gifted with real, visible magic, but she’d never seen any proof that it actually existed. The only skill Alice had was in reading cards and tea leaves – hardly useful in the world of real witches. A world she wasn’t even sure existed.
In truth, Alice was quiet and introverted; she enjoyed the solitude. Never once had she shown an inclination to leave her hidden mountain home. Oh, she dreamed of the world beyond the Shadow Lands: castles shrouded in mist, and schools where magic was taught to those who possessed the gift. She spent much of her time in her head dreaming of such things, but home was home. It was comfortable, peaceful; a reminder of her past, a physical memorial to her parents. She could never really, truly commit to the idea of leaving.
One evening in late autumn, all that changed.
A deafening storm rolled over the mountainside, pelting the wooden roof of Alice’s cabin with rain. She stoked the fire and tried to ignore it; she’d never liked storms. She was acutely aware that living out in the wilds with no real means of income meant that if a tree came down and crushed her cabin, she’d be homeless. Over the years, she’d learned about essential maintenance from some of her father’s old books. She’d treated the wood, cleaned every inch of the cabin inside and out, and even replaced three beams in the roof where it had started to leak last winter. She had done everything she could to weather-proof it, time-proof it, but tree-proofing it? Alice was sure there was nothing that could be done to protect her or her cabin if a tree decided to hurl itself down upon them. She’d managed to avoid destitution for eleven years, but when the wind howled, she couldn’t help but worry that her little wooden sanctuary wouldn’t protect her for much longer.
Night fell with alarming haste. Alice placed a kettle on the stove to boil as she prepared the root vegetables she’d collected earlier for her dinner. The rain sounded like it was weakening a little, but not enough to calm her nerves. Something didn’t feel right about this storm, about this night. Something Alice couldn’t quite put her finger on. She’d already consulted her tarot deck twice in the last hour but the answers were confusing and inconclusive.
A gust of wind rattled the windowpanes and the heavy curtains that were pinned to the frames fluttered. At the same moment, the candle she was working by was extinguished by the draught. Only the faint flickering fire embers illuminated the room and the shadows were heavy and thick like melting tar. Through the storm, Alice heard an unmistakable noise: knocking. Three slow, deliberate knocks on her heavy oak door. Her head snapped towards the noise. Someone was out there on her porch, at her cabin that sat in the middle of a forest, miles away from the nearest town. There were no hiking routes nearby, no reason for anyone to be just passing through.
A chill crept up Alice’s spine. Standing up from the small table, she kept hold of the knife she’d been using to prepare her food, the ivory handle sitting uncomfortably in her sweat-drenched palm. She inched towards the door, the blade of the knife glinting in a sliver of moonlight. Gathering her frayed courage, she reached for the handle and pulled just as a thunder crack echoed through the night sky.
Alice squinted through the pouring rain into the oppressive darkness but saw nothing. She frowned, the wind whipping through her raven hair, raising goosebumps on her arms. Another roll of thunder rattled above and Alice stepped back, suspicious and frightened, intending to close the door and shut out the creeping night. Just before she could, she noticed a patch of white on her doorstep.
A letter.
It was crisp and bright in the gloaming, entirely dry even though it sat on the saturated floor, completely exposed to the weather. As she bent to retrieve it, she failed to notice the pair of eyes that watched her from a shadow-shrouded spot in the trees.
Inside the cabin, with the door firmly closed and locked, Alice tore open the letter. As her eyes flicked over the words written in an exquisite scrawl, she felt fear strike
Her heart pounded in her ears even more loudly than the rumbling thunder outside, but she mustered her courage, swallowed her fear, and clutched that sliver of hope like a lost child clings to a doll.
Alice stumbled back and forth, stuffing her belongings into a black carpet bag. In mere moments, she was ready to do what had always felt impossible. She wrapped a heavy emerald-green travelling cloak around her shoulders before lacing up her strongest leather boots. Strength, she wagered, would be exactly what she needed on this journey.
With a shaky breath, she stepped out into the storm, lifting the hood of her cloak over her ebony hair.
She didn’t get very far.
Chapter One
Lying in the shadow of a great oak tree, Lily Knight held out a hand and let the dappled light of the early morning sun dance between her fingers. She had her other arm behind her head and revelled in the feeling of the dewy grass beneath her stocking-free legs and bare feet. She definitely should not have removed her stockings. According to the matronly busybodies of the town, it was most improper for a young lady to wander about in such a manner. But, rolling her eyes when recalling their scolding, she had removed them anyway and taken great joy in imagining the shocked expression on old Orla McHail’s wrinkly face if she could see her now.
Nature was Lily’s tonic. In those precious moments when the sun was awakening, as the world was bathed in pale, warm light, she felt the most alive. She was sure that this was the only real magic that existed in the world: the magic of birdsong, starshine, burnt-orange leaves, crisp early morning air, and glittering river water.
She sat up, resting her weight on her elbows, enjoying the coolness of the autumn breeze on her bare arms and legs for a few minutes more. Before long, she would have to return home to her little valley town, Alder Vale. Although for now she was content to watch a small nuthatch hopping between branches on the tree above her. Lily wished for a fleeting moment that she too could grow wings and fly up into the sky.
This was a conversation topic that often cropped up when Lily was with her closest friend, Alice Blackwell. They would lie by the river near Alice’s woodland cabin and take turns vocalising their hopes and dreams, speaking them into existence. Lily’s dreams didn’t often stretch much further than the boundaries of Alder Vale, but they always included flying up to the top of a tree or a tall mountain to gaze at the world below, just like the wild birds could. Her hopes were modest and revolved around preserving the little slice of normality that she had come to know and love. She had always pictured herself taking over her uncle Alf’s apothecary, which would make her the first female business owner in the village, perhaps even in the whole of the Shadow Lands. A fine goal to have, she thought.
Lily’s dreams had always been the complete opposite of Alice’s. In fact, almost everything about the two girls was different. They should never have got along. Alice contrasted Lily’s light and easy manners with darkness and awkwardness. They even contrasted in appearance, with Alice’s poker-straight, inky black hair that fell in a thick curtain to her waist. Black hair that shimmered in the moonlight, unlike Lily’s warm, strawberry-blonde hair that was meant to shine under bright, clear sunlight. If Lily was the sun, Alice was the moon, glowing in the rays of Lily’s kindness, and infinitely warmer because of it.
Where Lily’s dreams were practical, responsible, and quietly ambitious, Alice’s dreams were fantastical. She would speak of unearthing lost cities and tracking a coven of witches to teach her magic. She would spend hours every day checking her future in her hand-illustrated tarot cards or flicking through her grimoire, whispering spells under her breath, hoping to wish her magic into existence. Her biggest dream was to harness the magic she had never been able to conjure. Yet, in their jumble of future plans, the two girls remained sure of one thing: their friendship would outlast everything else.
Once, years ago, Alice had suggested that they call themselves the Sisters of Shadow, for although they were not related by blood, they were attached at the heart, two souls who loved each other fiercely. One filled with light, the other darkness, casting their shadows on the world around them.
Under the old oak tree, Lily’s thoughts strayed to Alice, her uncle Alf, and the apothecary. She found herself feeling incredibly fortunate for all she had been given in life. How could she ever wish for anything else, when everything she needed was right there within her grasp?
With that contented thought giving her the strength to leave behind the bliss of the magical dawn light, Lily stood, fastened her boots, and ran as fast as she could back to the village. The faster she ran, the faster the day would go and the sooner she could go up the mountain to see Alice and spend the evening by her log fire.
Lily ascended the creaking wooden staircase that led to her room after her habitual morning outing. She had so far, in her many years of sneaking out in the early hours, managed to hide it from Uncle Alf. She knew he would disapprove of her bare-footed escapades. That morning however, she had dallied in the fields for a few seconds too long. Her uncle appeared at the top of the stairs, looking through narrowed eyes at her dishevelled appearance. He was a round-bellied, rosy-cheeked man in his early fifties who loved Lily like a daughter and reprimanded her like one too.
‘Lily Saoirse Knight, where on earth have you been at this time of the day?’ he asked, frowning through his bushy greying eyebrows. Uncle Alf had never been very good at disciplining her, as she was a naturally wild creature with a strong will and a habit of forgetting rules the moment she stepped foot outside. She was sensible when it mattered and feral the rest of the time.
Lily looked up to him and exaggerated her apologetic face, mimicking the facial expressions of the six-year-old child she had been when she arrived twelve years ago, orphaned, turbulent, and already possessing the knack of making others bend to her will with kindness in her heart and mischief in her eyes. Uncle Alf grinned. ‘You know, if you’re going to sneak out and roll about in mud or whatever it is you young ‘uns do, you really ought to try not to get all that moss and twigs in your hair. It does rather give the game away, lass.’
Amused, Lily climbed the last few stairs. ‘I would say I won’t do it again’—she lifted her hand to her hair, picking out the bits of foliage that had found their way into her curls—‘but you insist that no one tells lies in this house so…’
She smirked, went up on her tiptoes to kiss her uncle’s cheek, and then skipped past him, disappearing into her room. Just before she closed the door, she called out to him, ‘I’ll be down to open the shop before we even catch a sniff of the first customer of the day, I promise!’ and then she vanished in a flurry of skirts.
