Witching Tree (Alice Gray Book 1)

43

                 
We were in a large hall with a white marble floor. It was cold under my bare feet, which ached.

I couldn't remember why.

My father sat before me on an enormous silver throne. Its back rose up above his head and separated into branches. Delicate leaves hung down and tinkled sweetly as they moved in a breeze that I couldn't feel. The chimes merged together to form a haunting melody.

It was the most beautiful thing that I'd ever seen. But there was something more. It touched the very depths of my soul, where the truth of myself lay naked. There was no hiding from this feeling. It was who I was. This was where I was meant to be.

My father's handsome face was relaxed. He looked younger now, almost as young as me. Something was wrong with that but I couldn't quite grasp what.

Deep in meditation, his large eyes were half closed, mouth set in a straight line. Elbows rested on the arms of his throne and his fingers met in front of his chest.

As one with the silver throne, his life-force glowed bright and strong enveloping the tree in its energy. Branches and leaves animated, the magic pulsed around the tree and my father in a rhythm that I understood as a fundamental part of myself.

The sweet sound of the leaves brushing together and the pulsing silver haze held me trance-like. I stood gazing at him for an indefinable length of time, need and awe in equal measure holding me in stasis, keeping me a slave to its call.

An almighty crash from behind me broke the rapture. Jonathan's eyes shot up, his face twisting in anger.

I didn't need to follow his gaze to see what had happened. A large mirror stood behind my father's throne, revealing a cavernous medieval banqueting hall. The ceiling was high and arched. Stone walls were carved in intricate patterns.

On the far wall, a piece of coving had fallen from the ancient looking stonework. Flecks of dust still clouded the area. Squinting, I thought I saw something move in the reflection.

Twisting away from the mirror to get a better look, the dust cleared to reveal a gargoyle peering down at me from a ledge in the corner of the room.

As soon as I had noticed one, I saw them everywhere. Grotesque figures on ledges carved into the walls, above the windows, hidden in the dark corners of the hall.

There wasn't any order to their placement or uniformity in their characteristics. Their sizes varied; some were full figures, others emerged part-formed from the stone walls. Some crouched, ready to pounce. Others flung themselves from the wall in ways that defied gravity, bodies stretching away, faces betraying horror that they couldn't escape.

I knew that gothic architecture was by its nature imperfect. That medieval stone-masons worked on the same buildings over decades. Without the tools of modern industry defects or blemishes were the natural consequence of human unpredictability. Gargoyles on the outside, grotesques on the inside, they were an expression of each workman's unique taste, but also of their strengths and weaknesses, faults and foibles.

But if that was the explanation here, then the stone-masons had some darkness in them. They'd brought nightmares to life in this building.

In all of their varieties, the stone creatures shared one common feature.

A look of pure terror deformed the face of every single one.

Unease washed over me, but my eyelids were stapled open. My wide, dry eyeballs darted from one distraught face to the next, unable to comprehend the pain and misery reflected back at me. Such anguish, what sort of person would surround themselves with this?

Shivering, I hugged my arms tightly around my body. My head throbbed, reminding me of the wound that I'd sustained earlier. I worried my bottom lip with my teeth, only to stop when the pain and taste of blood brought back the memory of Evan slapping me.

"Alice," Jonathan said, pulling my attention back to him.

"Yes...father," I stuttered, the word was empty and wrong.

Jonathan's eyebrows drew together in displeasure. His guise of youthful beauty faltered. Wrinkles started at the corners of his eyes and mouth, spreading into his face. Strands of white weaved through his chestnut mane.

The silver life-force buzzed and hummed, gravitating out from Jonathan's body and towards me. The chimes of the leaves hanging from the branches of the throne increased in speed and volume.

A ripple occurred at the far left of my field of vision. It was almost gone before my brain registered the movement.

But not quite.

I caught it: a call to action.

My senses sharpened, survival instinct kicking in, shooting adrenalin through my system, prompting my brain to catch up, to get with the programme.

Rhythmic chanting in old English words, low and sombre, reached my ears, so different in timbre than the tree's high-pitched shriek that it existed on a different sound-wave.

A flash of sudden clarity drove everything else out of my mind.

I was a victim of his glamour.

Bastard.