The Witches of Willowmere

Chapter 10

The street lights were all still out, the houses dark; no light but the moon's shone throughout the town. There was no roof above her, no tracery of tree branches to obscure her view: there was only the sky up top and the shadowy earth beneath. She was suspended in the air, flying weightlessly as if on silent wings. The moon floated in a netting of pale cloud, and the night around her was luminous. Every detail of the ground below sprang out at her; every leaf and twig and blade of grass stood distinct beside its sharp black shadow.

She was not in control of her flight—rather, she was being borne along on the wind, banking and gliding, moving in long, leisurely loops over the roofs and treetops. The sensation was so pleasant that she soon surrendered to it and let herself be carried along. It seemed to her that she turned her head to look back over her shoulder; her neck was suppler than usual, her head able to swivel all the way around. And where she expected to see her back and her outstretched right arm, she saw instead barred feathers and a flapping wing. An owl, she thought in bewilderment. I'm not me at all—I'm an owl. But how . . . ?

It could not be true, yet it was. It was like a dream that had turned real. High over town, she soared on down-soft wings past Lakeside Boulevard, saw the vast moonlit expanse of the lake beyond and, to the west, the unwinking eye of the little concrete lighthouse at the entrance to the harbour. Over Myra Moore's estate she flew—on, on to the great grey house she called Dracula's Castle.

A bonfire was burning in its grounds, down by the shore. Dark figures danced in a ring around it. Their voices rose towards her on the night breeze. They were chanting, but it was not the carefree, celebratory chant of the Wiccan coven. Its sound was low and monotonous and dirge-like; there was no joy in it, and more than a hint of menace. She started to glide towards the ground, wanting to see the black-clad figures more closely. But there was suddenly a shadow in the sky directly ahead of her, the swooping shape of an enormous bird flying at her, and she was forced to swerve aside, seeking refuge among the dark boughs of the trees.

The other bird was an owl too, a huge owl with dark grey plumage and savage yellow eyes. It pursued her in and out of the trees, out over the street, and across the town. She swerved and zigzagged desperately, and yet it was still as though someone else controlled her flight: no effort of her own could save her. She could only trust in the owl's swift body—the body that was and yet was not hers—in its natural instinct to escape its aerial assailant.

They were flying over her neighbourhood now. If she could get to her home, return to her own form, she would be safe. Down she flew over the moonlit roofs, coming at last to her own small house. The giant grey owl swooped at her and missed, tearing a feather from her back. She beat her wings—or something beat them for her. Down, down to the maple tree she fled, seeking the dark gaping knothole halfway up the trunk where she would be safe. She could see it .. . she was almost there. Then the big owl dived on her again, claws outstretched, as she grasped for the rim of the hole with her own talons and . . .

She was safe: safe and sheltered within the tree's embracing trunk. Relieved, she rested and soon drifted into sleep again.

Hours later, Claire woke up to the insistent beeping of her alarm clock. She sat up in bed rubbing her bleary eyes. She looked around her room, reassuring and ordinary in the daylight. The power had been restored sometime in the night: her bedside lamp was on, its glowing bulb feeble in the streaming sunlight from the window. The stubs of the candles still littered the room, sitting in little pools of wax, and as she looked at them, she felt rather foolish. The cupid candle looked especially pathetic, with its head and wings melted away.