Into the Witchwood

By Méabh McDonnell and Erin Brown

'Spooky, thrilling, and enthrallingly clever' Sinead O'Hart
Never, ever, set foot inside the Witchwood
Surrounding Rowan's home is the dark, dangerous Witchwood. At the heart of it, sitting at the bottom of an ancient well, is a powerful Witch.
Six months ago, Rowan's mother went into the woods – and never came back out. Nothing has been the same ever since. She fights with her dad and her little sister, and her Nana won't even speak to her. There's only one thing that can fix it; Rowan needs to bring her mum home.
There's magic lurking in the shadows. Watching her. Can Rowan enter the Witchwood and save her mum?
After all, she's a witch too...

• Language: English
• Publisher: The O'Brien Press
• Release date: Mar 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9781788495097

Méabh McDonnell

Méabh McDonnell was born in Dublin and grew up in Loughrea, County Galway. She has worked with the Clare People newspaper as sub-editor and children’s books reviewer and founded and edits cindersmagazine.com. She has an MA in journalism. Méabh has always loved nature and folklore and the mysterious ways they intertwine. During lockdown her daily walks through Kylebrack Forest got her wondering if anyone or anything was watching her – perhaps a Witch?

Book preview

8

The Rules of the Wood

1. Do not leave the path.

2. Do not go back the way you came.

3. The only way out of the wood is through it.

4. Do not take anything that doesn’t belong to you.

5. Do not eat or drink anything that is given to you.

6. But do not refuse anything that is offered to you.

7. Do not tarry or get distracted.

8. But help anyone who asks for it.

9. Remember, the wood lies.

9

Chapter One

An Unconventional Birthday

Nana was doing magic again.

I could smell it through the gaps in the windowframe. The scents of dust, smoke and burned feathers were trickling out through spaces in the rotting wood. It smelled like autumn bonfires: full of excitement and possibility. I sucked in my breath and held it, crouching low beneath the glass.

Tell-tale flashes of witchcraft illuminated the tiny front parlour before my eyes.

There was nothing inside that looked any different to anyone else’s Nana’s parlour – aside from the crystal ball that sat in the middle of the table. The crystal ball that was now glowing white and hovering in the air.

My eyes fixed upon Nana’s round figure, poised behind the ball. Her silver hair was floating up on either side, as she suspended the crystal between her fingers. It was casting strange light onto 10her skin, making her look older and younger all at once.

The midsummer breeze tugged at my jacket as I gripped the flaking concrete sill. This was not how normal girls spent their thirteenth birthdays. They spent time with their friends, shopping, listening to music and talking about … I didn’t know what other girls talked about. We didn’t talk about anything in our house. Not since Mum disappeared.

I closed off the thought and refocused on Nana. The crystal glowed even more brightly. My heart beat inside my throat as the ball sailed towards the ceiling and slowly began to spin. I stared, transfixed, as its colour faded from white and began to bleed green at the edges. The green colour seeped into the centre of the sphere, darkening until it was almost black. It looked like it was collapsing in on itself. It was a forest of endless trees. The wood that loomed at the end of our road. The wood that was standing silently at my back.

The wood that had spent the past six months haunting my dreams. I shuddered, even though the day was warm.

The wood was the home to all my bedtime horrors. Nana and Mum had spent years terrifying my sister and me with stories of the frightening creatures that lived inside.

I had always been unsure about Nana’s folktales about the wood. I never knew which parts to believe, until six months ago, when our Mum disappeared inside. And then, I knew just how true the stories were. The stories about the Witch, her woods and her haunted well. 11

My eyes pulled back to the crystal ball. The woods were rustling, like someone, or something, was attempting to escape. Nana’s jaw was gritted in concentration as she watched the scene unfurl. She twisted her left hand as if to get a better look.

I gasped as darkness erupted from the centre of the ball, as though someone had spilled an ink bottle inside. New colours swirled out from the centre, reforming to show a covered stone well.

My heart caught in my throat. My fingers started to shake, and once again, I felt a chill down my spine. I had heard the stories about the well all my life, and I knew what kind of horror lived inside.

It was the Witch. The reason that we were never to walk home after dark. The reason we were never to talk to strangers. And the reason we were never, ever, to set foot inside the woods.

If the Witch was the reason our Mum had disappeared inside those same woods six months ago, then I finally understood what had happened. No one won against the Witch.

Nana’s face was frozen in a mask of fear as she stared at the well at the centre of the woods. Inside the crystal, the lid of the well wobbled, shook and cracked down the middle. A white hand erupted from the centre.

I started backward and my foot caught on a stray twig. The crack echoed around the garden. Nana’s head whipped towards the sound. I ducked low beneath the windowsill. My heart 12hammered inside my chest as Nana’s footsteps shuffled closer to the window. She would see me hiding beneath the sill. And then she would know I had been spying on her.

I glanced upwards and my eyes caught on the long boughs of the crab apple tree that spread out across the front of her house. I took a deep breath, focussing entirely on the branch right above me. Just as the window was beginning to creak open, I whispered, ‘Eitilt.’ ‘Fly.’ In a moment, I felt the wind catch beneath my feet and lift me up into the sky. After all, I was a witch too.

My hands reached out and grabbed onto the knotted tree, just as the window opened wide and Nana’s grey head peered down and below the sill. I pulled myself into the cover of the tree as she glanced upwards, silently hoping she couldn’t hear the thunder of my heartbeat.

She peered down and around the path again and huffed in the direction of the house next door, and the sound of the boys who had just moved in playing soccer. Then she withdrew back into the house, closing the window with a curt ‘clunk’.

I let out the breath I was holding with a shaky sigh, allowing myself to collapse against the tree’s sturdy trunk. I was surprised the spell had worked; I hadn’t tried that one outside before. That was the thing about magic – it didn’t always do what you wanted in the moment that you wanted it to. The spells didn’t have to be said in Irish, but Nana always said that they worked better that way, especially in the rain. 13

Nana had stopped teaching me magic the moment that Mum disappeared. But of course, I knew she hadn’t stopped doing magic herself – I could smell it every time I walked past the house on my way to school.

A small voice piped up from a branch behind me. ‘You are going to be in soooo much trouble if Dad finds out you were doing magic!’

I nearly fell out of the tree. I just managed to hang on to the branch I was balanced on as I spun around to see my little sister’s face pale peering up through the pale pink blossoms.

‘Lila!’ I hissed, ‘What have I told you about following me?!’

‘I’m not following you; I was climbing the apple tree.’

‘And what made you decide to climb the apple tree in the first place?’

‘It’s the only way to get over to Nana’s without magic!’

A big branch of the tree hung right out and over Nana’s high garden wall, perfect for climbing over. It had taken me weeks to figure that out. Weeks of trying to sneak across to Nana’s house, after she stopped talking to us and locked her garden gate.

‘So you were following me then.’

‘I knew about the apple tree before you did – how do you think I watched you before?!’

This stumped me for a moment – I hadn’t realised Lila had been spying on my magic lessons too. It didn’t matter. 14

‘I don’t care how you followed me before – I just want you to stop following me now! Stop following me, stop copying me and just leave me alone!’

Lila’s small face crumpled. I’d gone too far. She was only three years younger than I was, but sometimes it felt like ten. I turned back into the tree trunk, trying to push down the lump that was gathering at my throat.

‘Just go away, Lila,’ I mumbled into the bark.

I heard her huff and sigh. And then the scrape of her leggings against the tree and her soft landing into the grass.

‘You win. I’ll leave you alone, but I was only coming over because I wanted to warn you that –’

‘ROWAN!’

My head snapped up at the sound of my name. Our Dad’s voice boomed from across the garden wall. Lila was right – I was in so much trouble.

‘Rowan! Get back over here!’

I shot a dirty look back to Lila, ‘Is this why you followed me? So you could tell on me to Dad?’

‘NO! I followed you so you wouldn’t get caught!’

‘Lila! Enough. We’ll talk about this later. Rowan, get down from that tree!’ Dad was waiting impatiently, his foot tapping on the ground. ‘You know what I said about using M-A-G-I-C!’

I was about to retort that I knew exactly what he said about using magic when Nana’s front door swooshed open and her small, 15round figure came racing out. Our Nana’s hair was long and silvery, hanging down around her shoulders. Her black skirts billowed at her ankles and her sleeves were flowing bells. She looked like every cartoon caricature of ‘witch’ you had ever seen. And I loved her for it.

‘Who’s making all this noise?!’

My heart slammed against my chest. Nana hadn’t spoken a word to us since the days after Mum disappeared.

‘Nana!’ I called out, dropping from the apple bough in a less-than-graceful tumble. ‘I wanted to talk to you!’

Nana’s ice-blue eyes flashed as her gaze flicked from Dad to Lila and then to me, to finally rest on the ground. ‘You don’t want to talk to me, Rowan.’

‘Rowan, come on,’ Dad called from the wall. I ignored him and ran over to where Nana was standing, her hand braced against the door frame.

‘I do want to talk to you! I need to talk to you – about Mum and the Witch and the woods –’

Nana’s face snapped back to mine. ‘No! I’m not telling you one more word about any of it!’

‘Nana! Please!’

‘NO!’ The leaves surged in a swirl of green around her feet. ‘I’m not talking to you about magic, the woods, the well or the Witch ever again, Rowan! It’s because of all that we’re in this mess; I’m not making the same mistakes with you or with Lila! So you can 16stop asking. You can stop hovering outside my door, and you can go away and leave me alone!’

The words hit me like a gut punch. Nana turned on her heel, walked inside and slammed the front door. It rattled so hard that birds flew out from the chimney stack. I stood there for a moment, shock and pain coursing through my body. Then the light rustle of Lila’s footsteps came from behind me. She didn’t say anything, but I felt her take my hand in hers. I ignored the burning in my eyes.

‘Rowan. You heard her. Come on.’

We both climbed back up the tree, along the big branch, and dropped down outside Nana’s wall. Dad was waiting, his hands resting on his hips. ‘You have to leave Nana alone, both of you. She doesn’t want to see you.’

‘No!’ I sniffed, ‘Nana is the only one who understands. You don’t know anything about making magic.’

‘I know enough. I know it’s dangerous, and yet you keep disobeying me by using it.’

I took a step closer to him, practically shouting. ‘Is that why you forbid us from talking to Nana? Because of the magic?’

Dad’s voice took on a softer tone. ‘Rowan, I thought you’d understand, after what happened with your Mum, that magic –’

I froze and whispered, ‘I don’t want to talk about Mum.’

‘We wouldn’t have to if you didn’t insist on performing magic and putting people in danger!’ 17

‘I don’t perform magic! I just do it by myself!’

‘That doesn’t make it any more acceptable! Magic is dangerous, Rowan, how often do I have to explain it to you?’

Lila let go of my hand and shrank back from us.

‘You don’t understand anything!’ I yelled. ‘About the woods, about magic and especially not about Mum!’

Dad wiped his hand over his eyes, like he was suddenly very, very tired.

‘Rowan, I’m not going to talk to you about this anymore. I’m just not going to discuss it with you. Especially not today. Not today, on your birthday, when we actually went to the trouble of organising a party for you.’

He gestured towards our house in the distance, at the end of the road. Coloured bunting and balloons hung in the doorway and on the garden gate.

I looked angrily at them both. ‘I told you, I don’t want to do anything for my birthday this year!’

‘Well too bad! You’re getting it whether you like it or not!’

‘I told you she wouldn’t like it …’ Lila mumbled under her breath.

‘For heaven’s sake, Lila! You made the cake!’

I jumped in between the two of them. ‘Don’t turn on Lila just because your plans to turn me into a normal girl aren’t working!’

Dad threw his arms in the air and stalked towards the house. ‘No. I’m refusing to listen to this anymore. You’re going home 18right this second. And then, tomorrow, we’re going to stay in the city, while I look for a new place for us to live.’

I spun on my heel again, ‘What?!’

Lila stared at Dad in disbelief. ‘No!’

Dad waved his hands in front of his body. ‘I don’t want to hear it. It’s happening, whether you like it or not. I’m getting you girls away from all of this … this … magic! And away from whatever it is that happened to your mum. We’re getting away from this place, away from these woods. We’re going to start over!’

The breeze caught my hair and rustled the leaves of the crab apple tree. Tears were welling up hot and fast behind my eyes. I could barely look at him.

‘I won’t go. You can’t make me!’

Dad seemed to sag a little. ‘I don’t want to make you do anything, Rowan, but you’re going to have to accept that we are leaving. That’s the end of the discussion.’

‘I wasn’t ever part of the discussion! You can’t take us away from this place, not while Mum is still here!’

He started to turn away, but paused, looked back over his shoulder and said, ‘Your mum would have wanted you to be safe, away from the woods.’

It was the final straw. I froze where I stood and whispered, ‘We have no idea what Mum would have wanted. Because she’s not here!’

Dad sounded incredibly tired when he spoke next. ‘You’re going to have to realise that you’re not the only one who lost her, Rowan.’ 19

His words hit me deep. It was too much to face all at once. I turned on my heel and ran.

I raced down the cobbled pathway in front of Nana’s, barely registering the uneven stones – all I could hear was Dad’s threat that we were going away. Away from Nana. Away from magic. Away from the woods. Away from Mum. I couldn’t let myself think about it.

So I ran as hard as I could, the countryside blurring into the background. Shouts from Lila and Dad echoed across the valley. I pretended not to hear.

I don’t know when I started crying, but the tears were blurring the trees even more. I couldn’t properly see where I was going. I sprinted around the corner, past the brambles, and launched straight into something solid, which sent me flying to the ground.

20

Chapter Two

Farid

‘Ooof!’ I hit the ground hard, my shoulder bouncing off the tarmacadamed road. I looked up and saw that the thing I had hit was, in fact, a person. It was a boy, tall and gangly. His hair was dark, his skin was brown and he was wearing a black hoodie and jeans. He was lying in a heap, struggling to get up, just like me. His head looked like it was framed in silver, lit from behind by the glow of the sun. His dark hoodie and bright trainers looked strangely out of place against the stone walls and tufted hedgerows. For a moment his eyes rested on mine. They were the colour of peat, deep and golden at the centre. He blinked and I blushed.

‘Sorry,’ I mumbled and struggled to right myself. He shook his head and smiled.

‘No, it was my fault. I thought you saw me, standing on the road.’ His voice was rich and deep, with a city accent. He got 21up and reached out a hand to help me. I took it, levering myself against him to get to my feet. Once I was straight, I let go and tried to hide my bloodshot eyes. I brushed the dust off my jeans with a quiet, ‘Thanks.’

He moved back slightly, shifting from one foot to the other. ‘You’re Rowan, right?’

I nodded, still embarrassed. He was gazing at me, like I was a mystery he was attempting to solve.

‘Isn’t it your birthday today?’

My head snapped up, embarrassment forgotten for a moment. ‘How did you know that?’

He jerked his head to one side, surprised by the strength of my reaction. ‘Um, your sister Lila called over to our house yesterday and invited me to the party. That’s actually where I was going right now.’

He gestured towards our house in the distance.

‘Oh,’ I said, mollified. He didn’t say anything, just kept watching me. Eventually, I mumbled, ‘I didn’t really want a party.’

He laughed, ‘Yeah, that’s kind of obvious. People who want parties don’t usually run away from them.’

My head snapped up, defensive. ‘I’m not running away.’

He raised his eyebrows, ‘Isn’t that why you were racing