Daughters of the Witching Hill by Mary Sharratt Page A

steady eyes blinked. Pale and quiet, she bowed her head. First time I ever saw our Anne at a loss for words. What if this drove a wedge between us? She might be half-frightened of me now that I'd passed into this murky place where she couldn't follow.
    "I can't just walk away from it," I told her, fair helpless. "Can't pretend it never happened."
    "No, indeed," she said at long last. "No one will let you. They'll come banging on your door at all hours, calling on you for this and that. Just be careful, love. It's a gift you've been given, but even gifts don't come for nothing. You might have to pay more than you bargained."
    With a rush of heat, I remembered how Tibb had appeared to me the Sunday I'd stayed home with my baby grandson.
All I ask is one kiss.
That single kiss had been enough to turn me into a different woman, one who was marked and set apart. Was that the true price and did I rue it? The mere thought of Tibb and his beauty, of how he filled me with awe and set my head brimming with golden light, made me flush like a girl in the thrall of new love.
    The strangeness gone out of her face, Anne wrapped her arm round my shoulders. Once more she was my friend, ever practical, quick to think up some joke to make me smile. "Never a dull one, you. Always had to choose the hardest road. Married that shovel-faced Ned when you could have had any lad in Pendle—barring mine, of course!"
    Eager to put this talk of magic behind us, I grinned.
    "Kindred spirits, we are," she said. "Had to do things our own way, no matter what folk said."
    Her arm linked with mine, we headed back. Sermon had lasted an age, the afternoon was wearing on, and our families awaited us. Gone were the days when we could linger together for hours and hours. But before we went on our separate ways, Anne plucked a lacy spray of cow parsley and tucked it behind my ear, which made us both laugh.
    "Our Anne, do you think things will ever be so good again as they were back in our day?"
    I wasn't talking about the old church, for Anne had never been pious. Far as she was concerned, both Catholic priest and Protestant curate were nowt but long-winded hypocrites. What I meant were the revels and feasts, the delight we'd shared when we were two garlanded girls traipsing into the twilit fields. Our own daughters had never known such a carefree time, only this life of toil and want.
    "The old ways are lost," she said, gentle and sad. "Not even them charms of yours can turn back time."
    She spoke as any sensible person would do. But after we'd said our farewells and I'd headed off home, I thought to myself that the old ways would never truly die if I kept them alive in my memory. Well important, it was, that someone remained to tell young folk that the world hadn't always been the way it was now.

    As Anne had predicted, folk in Pendle Forest would never let me forget what I'd done at Bull Hole Farm. When I went begging, they looked at me differently than before, as though they feared what might happen if they sent me away hungry. Instead of giving me the work of the lowest servant, they invited me to their table, served me what food they could provide, be it porridge or pottage or applecake, with a mug of their best ale to wash it down. Then, after an age of hemming and hawing, they made their request of me. Could I sit a spell with their child or their old mother, with their cow or their lame horse?
    The beasts I didn't mind. Adored cows, I did, for their huge eyes and their gentle might. All I needed do was stroke a cow's neck and she'd go soft as lambswool. Drop her ears and stand still and easy whilst I chanted my Ave Marias over her, sprinkled her with blessed water, and let her drink the special tonic I'd brewed. The most skittish horse would nuzzle my neck after I spoke to him and stroked him on the withers and under the mane. Then I'd poultice the nag's legs with elecampane, which my grand-dad had called Horse Heal, for it cured every rash and