The witches of the blue.., p.1
The Witches of the Blue Well, page 1
Contents
Introduction: Thoughts on Writing The Winter Witch
The Witches of the Blue Well
Photographs
Excerpt from Welsh Folk Lore: a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales by the Reverend Elias Owen
Excerpt from The Winter Witch
The Witches of the Blue Well
Paula Brackston
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Introduction: Thoughts on Writing The Winter Witch
Dear Reader,
Have you ever thrown a coin into a wishing well? And as that silver disc spun through the air and plipped into the cool water, did you—however much you pretended not to—hold close a dear little hope that your wish might come true? If so, then you are part of a tradition of belief in the power of wells that is many centuries old.
Wales is peppered with wells that have been called “holy” because they were blessed or visited by a saintly person, but many of these, and many more besides, were considered to hold magical and transforming properties long before Christianity reached the shores of this dramatic country. Known rather frighteningly as cursing wells, these might have been elaborately excavated and walled constructions, or a simple spring bubbling forth from the hillside. Those wells that became renowned for their powers attained their own mythology, their own stories. A tale would spring up, born of some small incident, coincidence, or stroke of luck—good or ill. An ailing child would drink from the well and be returned to good health. A prosperous farmer would fall to ruin after carelessly washing his feet in the well pool. People saw an effect, they discerned a cause, and conclusions were drawn.
Of course, such power could not be left unguarded or unwielded. It was not uncommon for someone—often a lone, elderly woman with no family and no other means of support—to set themselves up as guardian of a well, harnessing the magic of the divine water. Even if they did not actually own it. These figures became known locally, and villagers and farmers would come to them asking for curses or cures to be made on their behalf, Such women—for most of them were female—kept their position through a mixture of fear and respect. It was a dangerous post to take, for too much fear could start up cries of “witch!” and the consequences of that label are well documented.
I was drawn to the idea of the power of such a well continuing for hundreds of years, with legends surrounding it passed down from one generation to the next, their reputations growing and gaining more mystery with each passing decade. The region of Wales in which my book The Winter Witch is set is an open, wild place, with steep hills and high, bleak moorland. It is a place that breeds fierce people with fiercely argued views on life and fiercely held beliefs. It seemed to me to be exactly the sort of landscape that would breed witches. Real witches.
There is an innate human need to make sense of the seemingly inexplicable. People of all cultures have always striven to understand the mysterious workings of their world, and of themselves. As fast as science provided answers it raised yet more questions, and however much it addressed “how?” it rarely seemed to give a satisfactory response to “why?” Belief filled in the gaps in knowledge. Whether founded in religion or superstition, the idea of some otherworldly force influencing, or even deciding, the fortunes of us all has been a powerful and enduring concept. And one that many have manipulated for their own purposes. Cursing wells gave that idea a tangible form. It gave those who would use their power a place and a material to work with.
I’ve explored these notions in this short story. You will also find here an extract from an essay by Reverend Elias Owen, written in 1887, detailing from a contemporary viewpoint the way wells and their powers were used. I wonder what the good reverend would have made of The Witches of the Blue Well?
—Paula Brackston
The Witches of the Blue Well
That was the summer we watched a star fall from the heavens. Not everyone in the village saw it, but those of us who did knew that it meant something. Something important. The men were certain it foretold war, but Mam said men liked to speak of battles to show they weren’t afraid. Gwynnie said it meant she would find her one true love, but then she was fifteen and beautiful, and wanted a husband. She told me I couldn’t understand because I was only twelve.
Our grandmother was the one who really knew what that special star meant. “How can you tell, Mamgi?” I asked her, sitting by the hearth, legs curled beneath me, the rushes on the floor tickling my bare feet. The night-dark of the inside of our longhouse had shrunk the world to the reach of the uneven firelight. “How can you know what it means?”
She looked at me hard, and was silent for such a long time I thought she’d fallen asleep with her eyes open, as she sometimes did. She liked to tease me, but on this occasion her face was serious, her voice solemn.
“We are each of us born to a purpose on this Earth, Ceri. Your father is a farmer. Your mother raises her children. Your sister will marry well.”
“And me?”
“You, cariad, well…” She leaned forward in the creaking hazel chair and spoke in a whisper, words meant for my ears and none other. “You have the magic blood in you.”
I felt excitement flutter in my belly. At last she had spoken aloud what she had only ever hinted at before. There were suddenly so many questions I wanted to ask that I could not choose one to begin with.
“You are like me, Ceridwen,” she went on. “Like your namesake of legend.” She nodded slowly at the obvious truth of this, but I did not know what she meant, not truly.
“But, Mamgi, if I’m magic, too, why don’t I know what the star means?”
“You are young yet. Still more a child than a woman,” she said with a shrug.
I frowned at this. I was tired of being the baby of the family, tired of Gwynnie being treated like a grown-up and me having to trail behind her in everything. “I’m old enough,” I said. “Old enough to know things.”
“Oh, are you now?” Mamgi narrowed her eyes at me, settling back in her chair again. “Tell me then, if you’re so grown, you tell me what that star means.”
I tossed my head, as if the matter was casual, but then, as I started to think, as I started to recall that bright flash tearing through the velvet heavens, with its tail of fire burning a rainbow’s arc in gold above us, something inside me shifted. I felt a change within me. I was no longer guessing, no longer bringing my childish imagination to bear on the question. Instead, I experienced a certainty, a calm knowing of what it signified. And that knowledge was heavy and unhappy, so that I was chilled to my bones by it. I shivered and shuffled nearer the fire, but the cold inside me would not be driven out by its earthly heat. Still watching the flames lick the dwindling logs I gave Mamgi my answer.
“It means hunger and hardship. There will be bad weather, and the crops will fail, and the beasts will not thrive, so that people will fade away for lack of food. Sickness will come and claim those already weakened. Many will die.” The words came out of my mouth, but it was as if I did not send them myself. Rather they came through me. I turned to my grandmother again, my eyes full of tears and my heart full of fear. “Oh, Mamgi! What can we do to stop it?”
She shook her head sadly. “There is nothing to be done, cariad.”
“Then what is the point of knowing? What use is it if we cannot help anyone with what we know?”
“That is for you to work out, Ceri,” she said softly. “Now, sit still and let an old woman sleep.”
I can still see her dozing, the soft shadows from the fire lifting the years from her craggy face, her gentle snores accompanied by the crackling of the logs and the moaning of the lonely wind trying to find its way into the house.
Not twelve months later the terrible prophecy had come true. First there was drought. Then came the cold rain that washed away half a summer and most of the harvest with it. That winter the stock ailed and wasted before our eyes and nothing Dada or any other farmer of the village could do would save them. The rain turned to ice and snow, and the old and frail among us could not keep out the cold with empty bellies and were soon in the frozen ground. Even Mamgi’s magic was no match for nature’s cruelty. Before she died she tried to teach me what she could, but I was not yet a woman and the magic wouldn’t come. How I shook my fist against the heavy tread of time! Mamgi did not get cross. She told me to be patient, that she would help me, but she grew iller faster than I could grow older, and she was so frail toward the end.
By the grey spring that followed, cottages stood deserted and there were not enough people to work the fields. Exhaustion offered up its victims to any passing ailment so that even the strong and the young began to fall. Dada lasted longer than most, but died on Easter morning. The fight went out of Mam then, and she called us to her deathbed one cheerless afternoon in May.
“You must leave this place,” she told us, her breath ragged. “There is a wickedness here that will not stop till it has claimed every last child.”
“But, Mam.” Gwynnie could not keep the fear from her voice. “Where would we go? This is our home.” Poor Gwyneth was so very altered. Her golden hair had lost its luster. Her cheeks had lost their bloom. Even the periwinkle
blue of her eyes seemed to have faded.
Mam shook her head, too weary to argue or to dress her words nicely, “If you stay, it will become your grave.”
Gwynnie began to cry. Mam turned to me, taking my hand in hers. “Look after your sister, Ceri. I know you are the younger, but it is you who are the stronger. Take her far away from here, somewhere bright and sunny where she can be beautiful again. One day she will be able to repay you. Now she needs your strength. Your special strength, cariad.”
And so we left. We buried Mam next to Dada, and said good-bye to the only place we had ever known. We took with us just a small bundle each, for we had no horse to carry any belongings. Gwynnie had all but given up before we left, taking no interest in what lay ahead of us, not so much as asking where it was we were bound for. I told her, all the same.
“We shall travel west and make our way to the sea,” I declared, with a deal more confidence than I felt. I knew we could not go east, for that would take us into England. The mountains to the north would defeat us before a week’s walking was done. And I had heard tales of the wild men who lived to the south, who were lawless and Godless and would lick their lips at the sight of two lost girls. All I knew about west was that if you continued far enough you would reach the ocean, and that it was full of fish for the taking, and we would not have to dig in the dark earth for turnips ever again, but could feast on all manner of wonderful food that the shining sea would give us.
We were fortunate, at least, to be making our way into the unknown in the summer months, so that the nights were warm enough to spend beneath the stars without chilling us, and the days were cheerily sunny. Even so, Gwynnie found our path arduous. She had spent so long without good food that even when I succeeded in snaring a rabbit or finding blackberries for us to eat she could only manage a mouthful or two. In the evenings we would sit by a little campfire and I would watch her staring into the flames and I knew I was losing her. For she had lost so much, so many people she loved and, there was no denying it, she had lost herself. She was no longer beautiful Gwynnie, fair Gwynnie, Gwynnie who all the boys pined for. I could see she had already given up hope that she would ever be that bonnie girl again. And if she wasn’t her, then who was she? I tried to cheer her with thoughts of the future, thoughts of the sea, but nothing caught her interest.
“Oh, Ceri, what do we know of the sea?”
“I know it is full of fish,” I told her.
“We don’t have a boat, or even a net—how would we catch them?”
“I can catch trout in a stream; it cannot be so very different persuading fish from the seawater.”
She simply sighed and shrugged and went back to gazing into the fire.
While we were traveling I did my best to try and summon the magic Mamgi had seen inside me. If only I could put it to use, to help Gwynnie, somehow. At night I would turn my face up to the heavens and close my eyes and bring all my will and mind to bear, but nothing happened. Not a leaf stirred, nor a breeze got up, nor any sign at all that even the smallest drop of anything out of the ordinary was near.
We walked on for days that became weeks, until I stopped counting. What was the point in measuring things from a past that no longer existed? Instead, I took to asking people we met along the way how many days’ journey there might be to the coast, so that I was counting toward something, instead of away from it.
And as I walked I felt myself change. It was as if with each step I was moving further from being a child and closer to being an adult. One night, bathing my tired feet in a laughing stream, I was startled to see blood trickling down my leg. My own magic blood. What Mamgi told me she had been waiting for. The red droplets fell into the water, where they burst in a fleeting glimpse of pink before being washed away. The girl that set out from our village had gone and now a young woman stood in her place.
It was when we were fewer than five days short of our goal that Gwynnie started to cough badly, a deep rattle that shook her whole body. Four days off she had to keep pausing to catch her breath. We came upon a cottage and I knocked on the door to ask for bread, but the plump man looked down his broad nose at us and saw the state of us. Saw we were half starved. Saw my sister was sick. And he sent us away with the harsh words people use when they are afraid.
By the time we reached the top of the narrow valley beyond a high mountain pass I knew for certain I was watching my sister die. She had looked so poorly for so long that I had grown accustomed to the pallor of her skin, the pinched appearance of her features, the dark circles beneath her eyes, and the soft wheezing that accompanied each hard-won breath. But now there was something else. A subtle shift in the quality of her presence, as if her very soul were beginning to fade.
“Ceri, I can go no farther,” she said, sitting heavily on a low stone wall to one side of the dirt trail.
“Don't fret, Gwynnie. We can rest here a while and press on tomorrow. When you are feeling better.”
She shook her head. “No. I cannnot go another mile. Another step. I shall stop here.”
I wanted to argue with her. To grip her shoulders and shake her and tell her “Two more days! Only two more days’ walking to the sea, Gwynnie, the beautiful shining sea!” But I knew it was of no use. It was cruel of fate, or God, or whatever it was to stop us so near to our salvation, but stop us it had, for she could not continue. She would never see the sunshine glinting off the bouncing waves of the ocean, nor taste the sweet food from the sea I had heard tell of. She would die by the side of the lonely road and all I could do was witness her passing and bury her body.
I heard the music of fresh water and found a little spring a short way from the path. I coaxed Gwynnie over to it and settled her down in the shade of the mossy bank behind it. As I fetched water from the pool in front of the spring I felt a curious vigor return to my weary limbs. I could smell only the faint aromas of wet mosses and damp ferns, but it was as if I was breathing in something potent. Something…wonderful. I took the few blankets and clothes out of our packs and made my sister as comfortable as I could before hurrying off to fetch firewood and set snares. I was becoming accustomed to our rootless, scavenging existence, and necessity had made a fair hunter of me. Within an hour I had a cheerful fire going, and rabbit with wild garlic and sage simmering in our old cooking pot. Though the food did not interest her, I believe the homeliness of our make-do outdoor hearth and the gentle tinkling of the spring soothed Gwynnie, so that she even managed to smile at my attempts to sweep stones from our little space.
“You might make someone a good wife after all, Ceri,” she told me.
“Huh!” I said. “Why would I want to run around after some man? I can look after myself.” And, after all, hadn’t I proved that to be true?
We had just begun our meal when we were interrupted by the sound of uneven footsteps. I stood and peered into the gathering darkness to see an old woman emerge from the gloom. She was bent and weathered with age, and leaned heavily on a stick. Her pace was slow but, as she stepped forward into the firelight, I saw that her eyes were still quick and bright.
“Good evening to you, grandmother,” I said.
“What have we here?” Her voice was unpleasantly sharp and hoarse, as if she had spent a lifetime shouting and this was all the sound left her. “Two young maids all alone and far from home?” She moved closer still, stooping over Gwynnie to examine her more thoroughly, causing her to shrink away in fear.
“My sister is unwell,” I said.
“I have eyes to see that for myself, child.” She swung round suddenly and turned those eyes on me and now it was my turn to be afraid. There was such fire in them, such fearsome strength! It was all I could do not to take to my heels and run, but I could not desert Gwynnie. “Well then,” the old woman barked at me. “What have you done about it?”
“Forgive me… I don’t know what you mean?”
“You say your sister is ill, and you are right, so she is. Gravely ill. I asked you what you have done about it?”
“I… I have made her comfortable, built a fire, cooked her something to eat….”
“Yes… yes, I can see all that, too. Do you take me for a fool?”
