Daughters of the Witching Hill Read Online Free PDF Page A

father, Tibb would never leave me, as much as I sought to banish him. It was useless trying to fight it or deny it. He would be with me always.

3
     
    T IBB APPEARED TO ME almost daily, most often at daylight gate, though sometimes in the blue quiet of morning or in the black hush of night.
    "Why are you here?" I asked him. "Why do you keep coming?"
    He smiled and told me, "My lady sent me to look after you." But he wouldn't say who that lady was.
    I struggled to make sense of it. Cunning folk I knew, by name and reputation at least: the midwife down in Colne, the herbwife over in Trawden. Did they have spirits such as Tibb? If so, they would scarce admit it for all the world to hear, for dealing with spirits was sorcery and the Bible said suffer not a witch to live. But, then again, you were only a witch if you used your powers for evil. Cunning folk did good. I'd heard that the Trawden herbwife had once cured a man of palsy. Fact was, people had need of charmers, for who else was there to treat the sick? Even supposing a person was rich enough to hire a physician, such doctors, with their lancets and leeches, were more likely to do harm than good to a body. In the old days, the monks of Whalley Abbey grew medicinal herbs and they'd a prayer and blessing for every illness, even holy relics to heal those with serious ailments, but the brothers were dead or in hiding now, so it was either seek out a blesser or suffer without end.
    I made myself remember my own grand-dad, the light in his eyes. When I tossed in the throes of some ague, he'd only to lay his hand upon my brow and chant a rhyme under his breath for the fever to ease. Had he a familiar? Following my memory back far as it would go, I recalled the spotted bitch that seemed to follow him everywhere, yet the animal had never drawn close enough so that Mam or I could touch it.
    Mam wasn't a cunning woman, but she had known a thing or two. Long ago I'd heard her tell of the fairy folk. They were not like us mortal beings. Neither were they angels or demons or even ghosts, but a middle race that lived betwixt and between, made of a substance so fine that they could appear and disappear at will. Only the blessed and the mad could see them. My grand-dad had sought out their magics; many a horse he healed on account of their aid. They dwelt in a world apart from ours, yet it was very near. They'd a queen, the Queen of Elfhame, near as beautiful as Our Lady. She dressed all in green and rode a white mare with thirty-nine bells tied in its mane. Fleet as the bride of the wind, she'd ride, the music of those ringing, singing bells echoing through the forest.
My lady sent me to look after you.
Was Tibb, then, one of the elvenfolk, the Queen of Elfhame's host?
    With such things churning in my head, I thought I'd gone stark mad. Yet on the outside, nothing much changed. I was still Demdike, the beggar woman of Malkin Tower, mother to one bastard and to one squint-eyed spinster too poor to afford a spinning wheel.
    But Kit and his family moved on. It was Elsie's doing. To be honest, she'd never warmed to Liza and after I upbraided her for scolding Liza about the tansy, she'd taken to fearing me, too. I could see it in that fretful flicker in her eyes whenever I took her little son in my arms. She'd try to snatch him away, only Kit would wrap his arms round her and say, "Peace, Elsie. Let my old mother show some affection to her grandson."
    Kit's words were of little use. Elsie carried on as though I'd toss little Christopher headfirst into the bubbling soup pot soon as her back was turned. So she badgered and nagged till Kit at last agreed they could move down to Sabden and stay with her brother's people. I was happy, at least, that Kit found steady work in a stone-cutter's yard. Strong as a bull, he was, shouldering those great slabs of slate as if they were no heavier than a lamb's fleece.
    Once he and his family moved to Sabden, I only saw them of a Sabbath. Pained me, it did,