The Blackthorn Branch

Chapter 1

The potion was a sludgy, toady green that seemed to writhe as it was stirred. Cassie urged it, with all her might, to bubble and boil. Siân intoned the magic words, ‘Hocus hokum, fix what’s broken!’

Nothing happened.

Cassie lay down the stick she had been using to stir the cauldron. It dripped dolefully on the stony ground.

‘Hey, careful,’ Siân said. ‘If you stop stirring, the magic will curdle. Do you want the spell, or don’t you?’ Siân glanced at the concoction and her pointed black hat slid down her forehead. She righted it with both hands. ‘Well?’

Cassie did want the spell. If she could dab a drop on Byron’s pillow under moonlight and change everything back to the way it had been, then she would. Quicker than a hare down a hole. Inside her cloak, she shivered. The autumn air was cold and she’d been crouching over the cauldron for some time. She took up the stick and jabbed the green juice again. She wanted the spell, for sure, but what were the chances that this mush of leaves and rabbit poos and bottle tops was going to do the trick? The plastic bucket that they were using as a cauldron sloshed as she jabbed harder. ‘It’s just not looking very magic,’ she told Siân.

‘That’s because you haven’t added the special, final ingredient,’ Siân explained. She raised her hand and the piece of paper she was holding flapped in the breeze. It was her scrawled list of instructions for making a foolproof, cast-iron-guaranteed spell that she insisted would work.

‘What’s the final ingredient?’ Cassie asked doubtfully.

‘Two fresh nettle leaves,’ Siân replied. ‘And you have to pick them.’

Nettles? Siân hadn’t said anything about nettles when she’d suggested this. ‘I’ll get stung!’

‘No pain, no gain.’ That was something Siân’s mam said pretty often. Usually with a grim expression and her Couch to 5K app running.

‘My pain,’ Cassie pointed out.

‘Well, it is your problem we’re trying to fix,’ Siân said.

That was true, at any rate.

Cassie leaned back so that her weight rested on the heels of her trainers. She looked over at the house, and her problem. She and Siân were out back, on the bit of forgotten ground behind the terrace which was half car park, half dirt track. Her house, and the friendly squish of neighbours that stretched out on either side, was right at the edge of the council estate. Right where the village met the countryside. She could see all the backyards from where she crouched – each one different, with sheds or trampolines or thwacky bamboo clumps, or high mind-your-own-business fences, depending on the sort of person that lived there.

There was no sign of Mam or Dad in her own backyard. Clean washing puffed out on the line, drying in the weak sunshine. There was no sign of Byron either. Phew.

She could feel Siân staring at her. She couldn’t ignore her cousin any longer. ‘Are you sure it needs nettles?’

‘Course I’m sure. I wrote the spell.’

The nettles grew along the edge of the dirt track, forming a spiteful hedge, higher than the wooden fence posts in places.

‘Nain says nettles are good for you,’ Siân said. ‘They’re full of iron and vitamins.’

‘Yeah, when you make a soup, not when you pick them.’

Both girls stood. Cassie rustled like a crisp packet as she got up. This whole spell-casting had started when they’d filched black bin bags to go with their pointy black hats as Halloween costumes. Somehow, Siân had talked her out of trick-or-treating and into potion-making, just because Cassie had complained about Byron. She had wished that Byron could be swapped back to the Byron he used to be: part of the family, not part of the problem. She’d wished aloud to Siân and somehow that had led to her standing in front of a clump of nettles, wearing a bin bag.

Cassie eyed the jaggy edges of the leaves. They were evil. She’d wobbled and fallen off her bike into a clump of them enough times to know.

She held out her hand, fingers nipping nervously near the leaves... but not actually touching them.

‘You’re scared!’ Siân said. Her eyes were bright behind her glasses with the glee of it.

‘I’m not.’ She was.

‘You are.’

Cassie wanted to do it. She wanted to show Siân that she was brave, that she didn’t mind a few stings if it gave her the potion.

But she couldn’t make her hand reach out and grasp the nettle.

She felt sudden tears burn her eyes. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t.

‘This is a stupid game!’ she said with a burst of anger. She turned back to the orange bucket and kicked it properly this time.

‘Hey!’

The bucket rose up then bounced down with a tinny rattle of the flimsy handle and a spreading puddle of mud that had been Siân’s Grand Plan. Siân glowered at Cassie. ‘You didn’t have to do that.’

Cassie watched the dirty water sink between the gravel, leaving tiny islands of mashed dandelion leaves behind.

‘Seems there’s more than one person in your house with a temper,’ Siân said under her breath. She righted the orange bucket, but there was no fixing the potion.

Cassie felt her face blush hot. She hadn’t meant to lash out. But she hadn’t been able to help it. Both girls were silent for a moment, stewing like potions themselves.

Cassie swivelled the tip of her trainer into the gravel, feeling the stones roll and grind like gnashed teeth. Siân had only been trying to help.

So, Cassie said, ‘I’ll give you a go on the good scooter.’

The good scooter had been Byron’s when he was still interested in sensible things like scooters and bikes and seeing who could dam the stream and flood the bottom field the best, and not stupid, useless things like hairdos and Year Twelve girls and how to get lifts into town.

Siân clearly saw that a go on the good scooter was a peace offering – the closest Cassie would get to saying sorry.

‘If you like,’ Siân said.

That was the good thing about Siân. She didn’t hold a grudge.

The cauldron and potion were left abandoned at the edge of the gravel car park as the girls headed to the backyard. The good scooter lived in the lean-to there, next to the no-good scooter which had come from the Lidl middle aisle and had a wheel that jammed.

But Mam was standing at the open back door. She’d looped her dark hair with a bobble to make an untidy half-ponytail. It was her why-can’t-I-have-any-time-for-myself hair. She glared out at the yard.

Cassie held out her arm to stop Siân. This wasn’t the moment to get noticed by Mam. There was a low wall, set with a gate, that ran along the end of the yard, separating it from the track. Cassie slipped off her pointed witch’s hat and crouched behind the wall. Siân followed suit.

‘Byron!’ Mam yelled over her shoulder, back into the house. ‘Byron! What are you doing? I asked you to bring in this washing an hour ago.’ Mam sounded more tired than angry, which was worse somehow.

There was a sulky rumble, Byron’s voice, but too low to be able to make out the words.

‘Don’t backchat. Do you want me to fetch your dad?’

Cassie flinched. Her fingertips pressed against the brickwork, as if she might be able to push her worry into the narrow cracks.

She wasn’t going near the yard now, good scooter, or no good scooter. Not if Byron and Dad were about to have words. Cassie swivelled, so that her shoulder blades rested against the wall. The tail end of the sun had warmed it a little. It felt solid, dependable.

‘It’ll be OK,’ Siân told her.

Cassie didn’t reply. She looked out at the field beyond the track, beyond the estate. Her eyes rested on the green grass. The far end of the field sloped upwards and was smudged with grey thickets of autumn bramble. Atop the bramble line was the old railway track – long since abandoned and overgrown – that used to move coal and slate and people to the towns and cities beyond the valley. The field looked damp and sombre now, but in the summer Cassie and Siân had made daisy chains there and hunted for early blackberries on the slope.

‘Byron!’ Mam’s shout was closer now. She must be in the yard. ‘Forget it. I’ll do it myself. But your dad will have something to say about it when I tell him. Wait... Where are you going? Byron, I’m talking to you.’

The gate slammed open, the wood shuddering against the brick wall. Byron stepped out, hood up, hands pocketed, his shoulders pinched high. He mumbled something, then swore loud enough for the whole terrace to hear, as far as Mrs Davies on the far end.

‘Byron!’ Mam shouted.

He ignored her. And the washing he’d been asked to bring in. And he ignored Cassie and Siân, watching from the lee of the wall.

‘Don’t you walk away!’ Mam shouted at his back.

She might as well not have spoken for all the attention he paid.

Cassie felt her stomach squirm. He shouldn’t ignore Mam like that. It wasn’t fair. She should make him pick the nettles. She should push him into the nettles!

With his back to everyone, Byron stalked off. Not caring at all about how upset Mam was. Not caring about anyone else in the whole wide world.

Cassie stood slowly. Mam tore the sheets down from the line, pegs and all, and wrapped them round and about in a bundle. Byron stomped away in the other direction, away from the house. Cassie expected him to stay on the dirt track – it led to a footpath that ran past the junior school and to the centre of the village, which was really just the main road and a Spar shop. When Byron wanted to play at being older and grown-up and more important than he was, he’d stand outside Spar with the Year Twelves. It was stupid.

But Byron paused. He didn’t go that way. He checked his watch, then turned to the fallow field and the nettle hedge. He rested his hand on a fence post and, carefully, sprung over the barbed wire.

‘Where’s he off?’ Siân wondered.

Cassie felt her indignation burn bright inside. Byron was a lazy, thoughtless, selfish idiot. And now he was doing something strange.

There was only one thing for it.

‘Let’s follow him,’ Cassie said.

Chapter 2

What was Byron up to?

He had ignored Mam and nearly picked a fight with Dad, all before storming off in a mood in the wrong direction. It was as much as Cassie could do to stop herself rugby-tackling him and sitting on him until he said sorry.

‘I guess we’re definitely not going trick-or-treating then?’ Siân asked.

Cassie untied the bin bag from around her neck and stuffed it into her hat. This felt more important somehow. ‘Mam didn’t even get us proper costumes from the big supermarket this year. I don’t want to trick-or-treat. I want to find out where Byron’s going, don’t you?’ There wasn’t much time. Byron would soon be out of sight. ‘Please, Siân?’

Siân undid her own makeshift cloak. ‘Come on then,’ she said.

Byron didn’t look back as Cassie pressed down on the lower string of barbed wire with her foot, while simultaneously yanking hard on the upper string. Siân gingerly eased herself through the gap Cassie had forced in the fence. Cassie, who was a bit bigger and broader than her cousin, cursed when it came to her turn. ‘I scratched my arm,’ she said and licked the red spots of blood.

‘Do you want to go back?’ Siân asked.

‘No.’

They followed Byron. He crossed the fallow field, keeping to the desire path worn into the grass by dog-walkers. He took rough swipes at the damp, drooping seedheads, decapitating the stems. At the end of the field, the ground rose up steeply to meet the old railway line. It had once carried the insides of the hills roundabout, out to the rest of the world, to use as coal to stoke furnaces, slate to cap homes, ore to roar and crack until the metal ran red. But the trains had stopped when Nain was a girl. Now, it was overgrown, tangled, quiet but for the sound of small brown birds tweeting their business to the sky. The old line was gone, leaving just the path to snake along the valley floor, towards Penyfro Mountain.

Byron paused for a second before starting the climb.

Cassie rubbed at her forearm, smearing her skin pink. ‘What’s he doing?’ she muttered.

‘Running away to join the circus? Looking for a ship’s crew to enlist in?’ Siân suggested.

‘You read too many stories.’

‘That’s not a thing that’s possible.’

Siân would read anything, from the sauce bottles at teatime to Taid’s musty little book collection. Cassie still had Christmas present books from last year that she had never even opened, so she said nothing.

Ahead, Byron was paying them no mind. He had reached the top of the old embankment. He moved out of sight.

Loose stones, gravel and burned coal riddled with holes skittered away under their feet as they climbed after him. The path wasn’t kept tarmacked by the council, it was just for dog-walkers and rabbits. There was nothing up here. No reason for Byron to come this way. It didn’t make sense. Cassie clung to buddleia branches and skinny roots where she could to help her scramble up. Her head popped up over the top. Taking care not to touch any of the nettles that swarmed over the sunlit spots, she pressed through to the old railway line.

There!

Byron was a figure in the distance now, moving quickly. Head down, guiltily looking like he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Cassie kept to the side of the path, ready to duck into a knot of brambles if he happened to look back. But he didn’t. It was more like he was trying not to be seen either.

What was he playing at? The old railway line had good spots for dens in the elder and buddleia, though you had to be careful not to get scratched by the blackthorn and brambles. And there were hazel trees with nuts at the right time of year, but Byron claimed – often and loudly – that he was too old for all that sort of thing now. He had shut himself off from everyone, since Taid...

Cassie squished the thought before it tripped her up. She didn’t want to think about that now. This was here and now, and Byron was being weird.

The only thing along this path was the old railway tunnel.

Cassie had never been inside.

Even on summer days, with the sun burning hot and high in the sky, the tunnel was wet and cold and dark. The blackness slithered as you looked at it. Shifted, as though it wanted your gaze to move on and forget you’d ever seen it. In autumn and winter it was worse. Night came early and the tunnel seemed to crave dusk. Already the sun was low, catching on the uppermost branches.

Byron walked as though a tide were pulling him forwards, urging him. He didn’t look left or right, he barely looked down, stumbling, once or twice, on uneven ground. He broke into a run. Not running from them, but running towards something.

Cassie smelled the fire before she saw it. Felt the acrid smoke making her eyes water. What was on fire up here? Should they call the fire brigade? Sometimes there were fires up on Penyfro Mountain when the bracken got dry and crisp, but it was surely too late in the year for that?

Cassie hurried forwards. As they turned a corner on the old track, she saw what was happening.

Boys. Three of them.

They’d set a small bonfire inside a rusting steel drum. The flames shimmered, rising up like letters burned to Father Christmas, twisting and snaking into the sky. Smoke, and flames and sparks of orange and white.

She stopped. She and Siân edged into the scraggly bushes beside the path to stay hidden.

Byron stood at the edge of the small group. Watching hungrily. Not a part of it yet, but clearly wanting to be.

The burning drum was set in the middle of the path. Beside it was a car. It looked old, battered, paint flaking and headlamps dirty and cracked. The tyres weren’t round any more, they were misshapen, with a straight line at the bottom. The car looked like it hadn’t run in years.

‘Who are they?’ Siân whispered.

Cassie shook her head. She had never seen these boys before. They were teenagers. One, with dirty blond hair and dirty pale skin the