Riverwitch

By Rem Wigmore

2021 Sir Julius Vogel Award Finalist for Best Novella

 

Self-taught witch Ashley Robinson considers it her duty to protect her hometown Hamilton. She spends her time doing community work and picking up litter by the Waikato River.

But something is badly wrong with the river, a sickness deeper than mere pollution can explain. Magic must be the cause, but is it a curse or something else entirely? Ash has to get to the bottom of it, armed with nothing more than the support of her best friend Mikaere and a pocketful of crystals.

Then there's Bryony Manu, the town's only other witch. A charismatic practitioner of dark magic, Bryony is infuriating … and captivating. Ash needs their help to track down the source of the spell draining life from the river. Can she balance her work with her attraction to Bryony, and master her magic along the way?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rem Wigmore
• Release date: Apr 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9780473556631

Rem Wigmore

Rem Wigmore is a speculative fiction writer based in Aotearoa New Zealand, author of the solarpunk novels Foxhunt and Wolfpack. Rem’s other works include Riverwitch and The Wind City. Their short fiction appears in several places including Capricious Magazine, Baffling Magazine and two of the Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy anthologies. Rem’s probably a changeling, but you’re stuck with them now. The coffee here is just too good.

Book preview

Chapter One

Patrolling the river was probably Ash’s favourite part of her daily rounds.

She might only be a self-taught witch, combing through spiritualist books and the internet to find the things that worked, but in Ash’s opinion she still had a responsibility to the place she lived. Witches kept order and balance, witches healed the sick and defended the weak. Probably. Anyway, she’d decided they did.

Ash picked up a lot more litter than she picked up Negative Vibes or lingering spirits, but she figured that was still helpful.

She’d already helped Mrs E with the gardening, so her shorts and her comfy sneakers were both smeared with dirt. Of course Ash was loaded up with her best crystals, layered pendants and rings with chips of semiprecious stones, but the main tools she needed for her work were sturdy shoes and a patient expression.

Her t-shirt bore a picture of a fish, with the caption Women want me, fish fear me. Not exactly grand ceremonial robes.

Sunlight shone off the Waikato River, and the air smelled warm and rich with mud and growing things. Ash smiled at a dragonfly hovering like a flicker of light over the water’s surface, and trudged onto the dirt off the path to pick up a half-buried coke bottle.

The bottle went into her satchel, to be rinsed and recycled later. While she was here, close to nature, Ash closed her eyes a moment to breathe in the feeling. She murmured her thanks to the river, and the taniwha that resided in it.

Ash had no idea if taniwha existed or not, but better safe than sorry. Either way the river existed and deserved respect.

She pushed back her tangled dark hair and picked her way back to the path, careful not to tromp on any small plants. The sun was hot on her arms and the back of her neck, and her feet were sore. She’d just walk to the old willow tree that teens scattered beer bottles under, and then go have tea with her flatmate.

A few other people were out enjoying the day. Ash nodded to a kid out walking their dog, who ignored her. A little while along, an elderly couple stopped to smile at her and wish her a good day, and she smiled and wished them a good day back.

She came to where the path opened out, a grassy green bank leading down to the river. The usual pack of ducks dozed and nibbled at the grass, and Ash held up her hands in apology as she passed close by them.

None of them moved, not a twitch, not a muscle.

Ash stopped. She paced a few steps back, then approached again. This time the ducks set up a disgruntled quacking and waddled away from her.

She stuck her hands in her pockets, frowning. This was weird. The local ducks were pretty used to people, but the soft quacking of ducks retreating was a constant of her riverside walks.

Ash clambered down the bank to the river’s edge. The smell of mud was stronger, and sun-baked clay. She could hear flies buzzing somewhere, but that wasn’t unusual with the number of people who walked dogs here.

The Waikato seemed its usual self, deceptively sedate, a giant carving through the landscape. From the bank the flow of the water looked lazy and slow, but Ash was born here, and knew the current’s fearsome strength.

A cluster of dark green waterweeds swayed, a few metres in. She glimpsed a bright shine of gold, a koi carp lazing in the mud.

It was unnaturally still. Ash came closer, pausing with the toes of her sneakers touching the water. The koi just sat there, not hovering above the bottom of the river but sitting unmoving in the mud. Like something dead, but if it were dead it would float up…

Ash watched for at least a minute before the koi flicked its tail and stirred a few inches forward.

Real fear sat clammy in her heart now. Something was wrong with the river.

Ash dropped to her knees in the mud, sinking her hands into the water.

It was cool but not cold. She closed her eyes, opening her consciousness out. She didn’t have any moonstone to help her intuition, but she’d spent enough time on mindfulness that she could empty her thoughts, let them flow along with the river, get some kind of feeling of what was wrong.

The river was sick.

It was sluggish with effluent and farm runoff, but there was something else, a sickening. Pollution, and not the usual kind.

Ash sat back on her heels, wiping her mouth with one muddy hand, nauseated. Sinking too deep into the feeling of the river was dangerous, could lead to being swept away, but she’d never felt so unsafe in these waters before.

All right. There had to be something she could do. She was a witch.

Ash took inventory of the crystals she had with her that could help. Her amethyst pendant; amethyst was a good power boost. There was her bloodstone, for healing. She’d left her fluorite at home, and that could absorb a fair bit of negative energy, but this…

This was beyond the power of a self-taught hedge-witch.

Still her job, though. Her turf. Her responsibility.

Ash stood up, brushing her hands off on her shorts, mouth a thin unsatisfied line. She had to do something.

* * *

Ash’s flatmate Mikaere heard her out, and then pushed a chipped mug of tea to her over the table. Do a spell to fix the river! Mikaere said, wide-eyed with wonder like always.

He was her most enthusiastic supporter, but never believed her when she told him she wasn’t superhuman. Ash sighed, rapping her knuckles on the table. The clinking sound reminded her, and she got up and set her rings aside to clean and cleanse them later. Cleansing was important to keep the power uncorrupted, probably, and cleaning was important because the river had a lot of silt.

What kind of spell, huh? Ash said, sitting back down and resting her face on one hand. A magic river-healing spell? Think I can find one of those on WitchLife?

Mikaere shrugged. Seems like a good start, right?

He was taller than her, with broad shoulders, dyed blond streaks in his black hair and a face you could rely on. Right now he was in jeans and his favourite shirt, a tank top featuring a dragon with wings flared against a rising moon.

Mikaere Hamuera, her best friend since childhood, her flatmate for the past three years. People who saw how close they were always assumed they were either dating or wanted to be, but Mikaere only liked men, preferably the dorky kind with glasses, and Ash was… well, she was busy. Maybe someone would come along eventually, but she was the town’s only responsible witch. Who had time for romance?

If only the town’s other witch could shoulder a little more of the load.

I need to figure out what’s wrong first, Ash said. She opened her mouth, hesitated then closed it. This was too big for her, more than her small magic could handle. But it was hard to say that to Mikaere, his eyes shining with belief in her.

The river’s sick, Mikaere said, shrugging. We heal it. Well, you heal it and I bring you snacks.

Their other flatmates, a couple, were away for the week, which made talking about magic easier. It’s not just sick, it’s polluted with something, Ash said. I mean aside from … She waved a hand, grimacing. Balance wasn’t always easy to maintain. The health of the river, all the life it sustained, versus the livelihood of people who might have no better options, farmers ordered into more sustainable practices without any support to make them possible. There was no clear villain in the mundane pollution of the mighty Waikato.

The magic pollution, though, that was another matter.

Pollution isn’t quite the right word, Ash said, thinking aloud. She took a slurp of tea and sighed in appreciation. "The Waikato is normally this massive source of life and energy, sustaining so many animals and plants and people in so many ways. And it’s like there isn’t the life there should be. Like something’s… I don’t know, sapping the life energy."

A curse, Mikaere said, nodding.

"Well,