Free Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles by Cecilia Dart-Thornton Page A

a jerk the chaise picked up speed, heading along Old Horse Lane on the last leg of the journey, until at last they arrived at the High Darioneth Mill.

    The Mill was a roomy, three-storied edifice built of stone, with living quarters attached. In the walled yard stood an assemblage of outbuildings including a byre, stables and a kiln. Substantial and imposing, the manufactory nestled below the weir on the millstream. When the chaise approached, the incoming party could hear the rhythmic splashes of the great waterwheel as it turned. Black water, silver-polished, surged down the head-race and through the wooden gates that controlled the flow. As it entered the wheel-pit, it cascaded into the long buckets fastened to the outer perimeter of the mighty wheel, which turned in a direction opposite to the water’s flow. Weighed down, the full buckets sank, spilling their contents at the lowest point of the wheel’s rotation. The water then surged away down the tailrace, returning to the stream at a junction below the mill buildings.
    Wheat, barley, oats, rye and other cereal crops would not thrive at these high altitudes. This was not a flour-mill but a nut-mill, and its water-drivenmachinery powered not only the massive grindstones for making nut-meal, but also the shell-cracking rollers.
    A family owned and ran the works. Their name, coincidentally, was “Miller,” and they had been friends to Asrathiel’s family ever since she could remember. Throughout her childhood Asrathiel had accompanied her parents and the large Miller family at the annual celebration of Mai Day. Now that she was eighteen, for old times’ sake she continued the tradition.
    Asrathiel and her young cousins ran ahead of the traveling-chaise as it bowled through the gates of the mill-yard, keeping their distance from the mud thrown up by the wheels. Primrose lamplight spilled from the windows of the building. Seven white geese scattered, honking, from Dobbin’s hooves, and a thick shaft of radiance shot from an aperture as a door was flung open. A few ghostly feathers drifted in the air while the eldest son of the current mill-master came striding out to welcome the visitors. He was a young man of three-and-twenty Winters, and his name was Faramond. In his wake his siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and parents issued from the building calling out greetings. The newcomers entered and, after they had partaken of some steaming hot soup, they and the willing members of the assembly set forth into the gloaming, lanterns held high, dragging small sleds or carrying baskets.
    All across the plateau folk bearing lanterns were bringing in the mai, collecting the spume-froth of hawthorn-flowers from the laden hedgerows. The darkling woods rang with laughter and cries of delight, which were not always associated with finding good specimens of flora; Mai Day Eve was a time of unbridled fun, for which reason many parents forbade their daughters to participate in the overnight flower-gathering.
    Mai Day Eve had an alternative name: “Mischief Night.” During these sunless hours, eldritch wights were wont to play practical jokes on hu-mankind. Taking advantage of this phenomenon, pranksters of the human variety indulged in an annual prodigality of lawlessness, during which their pranks, being blamed on mischievous wights, might go unpunished. It was a night for knocking on closed doors and running away, for blocking chimneys, abducting and hiding garden gates, pretending to smash windows by smacking them with the palm of the hand while breaking glass bottles, and blowing smoke through keyholes. In his youth, Asrathiel’s cousin-once-removed, Ryence Darglistel-Blackfrost, had perfected a cunning device made of buttons and string which, when hooked up correctly, could be used to tap on windowpanes from afar. He had taught the trick to several of his young relations, and still delighted in helping them confound innocent householders.
    The hawthorn blossoms appeared