Ma Tunstall stomped deeper in the forest’s north. There was a reason most locals didn’t like to go there, which was even more apparent as darkness drew closer. This was the wilder, untamed part of Hernshore woods. No one coppiced here or maintained the paths. Something else did, but it wasn’t a man or woman. Not that it ever bothered Ma and her line.

  The undergrowth thickened into briars taller than she. Trees old and gnarled by time and vestiges of magic threw their shadows in contorted spectres of their already twisted selves. They shivered and jerked in the wind, rustling in mutinous conversation.

  Twigs snapped under Ma’s Wellington boots. Thorns scraped their sharp tongues across her arms and legs, sampling what she had to offer. She knew the way. It was the lot of all Tunstall women, the price they paid and the prize they obtained. Keepers of the tale. Squires and counsel to the Lorimers. Reader of the fates. That was why she made the pilgrimage now, gripped by anger and betrayal.

  A thorn, as large as a thumbnail, drew across her cheek. Blood formed a fat teardrop and rolled down her face. Ma carried on without flinching, without acknowledgment. She would not be deterred.

  Finally, she came to a gully and stumbled down it, losing her footing in the mulch near the bottom and landing on her backside. She got up, cursing her god, and used protruding tree roots as handholds to scale the other side. There at the top, trees thinned, and the woods opened into a meadow of wildflowers. In the tenebrous dusk, they looked more like waves in a choppy harbour. She waded in. The flowers and grass reached mid-thigh and buffeted her with ineffectual hands as she cut a furrow directly to the other side. To her left was the shoe tree, where the townsfolk often hung a pair of a loved one’s shoes when they passed. A dozen or so dangled there, their silhouettes swinging like miniature hanged men at the gibbet.

  At the far side of the meadow, the trees rose again into a formidable wall but for a cleft in their bulwark, where a wide path ventured into the gathering dark. No bramble, fern, or sapling ever dared to grow there. They stayed huddled beneath the trees that flanked the way, watching with the pairs of green and yellow eyes belonging to other things that made these woods their home. Ma ignored them all.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  An owl screeched when the old woman reached her journey’s end. Sweat had joined the trickle of blood on her face. She was breathing heavily, catching her wind before she approached the altar.

  The ancient oak dominated all the other trees, with a trunk thicker than ten men standing abreast. Heavy boughs hung low, shouldering its expansive canopy, as if to carry half the world on its back. The storm was almost on them. A mountainous bank of putrescent darkness harried the forest. Lightning coruscated and yanked the shadows into oblivion. Ma opened her palms, arms at her side, chin raised, eyes closed in penance before the world tree. When the light waned, she opened her eyes and pulled the rusted pruning knife from her apron pocket to the roll of the thunder.

  Knees complaining, she knelt in the fork between two colossal roots. The twilight tasted of iron and earth and salty-sweet decay. She thought of the morning and its three gulls and three clouds slicing into the perfect blue sky, of the three crows who chased their ginger tomcat Bede into the farmhouse. She thought of the black Mercedes rolling inevitably towards Toby and his harvester. She thought of the white worms and sand in the soil, the tainted meat of cattle, the patches of withering crops. And above all, she thought bitterly of the Lorimer boy’s two dead mothers.

  The whole town thought they had more time. The sand had come to the fields a year ago right after Lady Lorimer died in London. This was sad, but nothing to worry about. At the time it had seemed a wrinkle in the ways of the world, because Michael, Lord Lorimer, as yet had no heirs. Or so they thought, and apparently so did Michael. Had she missed something? Not read the signs? Clearly, but why? What had gone wrong for things not to be taking their normal course?

  She closed her fist around the pruning knife’s blade, gripping hard, and pulled her hand up sharply. Stifling a gasp, the thunderheads flashed, and she squeezed her fist, until blood pearled between her fingers and dripped on the leaf litter.

  There was just enough light to see by. Ma dropped her face close to the smattering of crimson. She dragged her cracked nail through it, etching lines into spokes that crossed at an off-centred hub, trailing blood with them to form an irregular web of grubby crimson. She stared hard at the mandala, until it was the only thing in her mind. Red threads latticing a sordid brown night. Patterns in the infinite firmament. The ancient oak creaked. The forest rustled in agitated consort, and Ma saw it. Her eyes went wide, as the wind changed, blowing both warmer and harder, gusting through the woods.

  ‘No!’ she gasped, kneeling up straight and turning into the coming sandstorm.

  Rolling in a roiling tidal wave, the sandstorm swept through the trees and up the path to the altar tree, engulfing it and her.