Free Abby the Witch by Odette C. Bell

think we would, dear. What
with us practically living on the bay and all.'
    Abby opened
her mouth to protest further but stopped. The feeling was still
there curling around her body like a strangling jungle vine –
something was very, very wrong. She stared down into the swirling,
eddying mug of milk, willing the movement to help her understand
what on Earth was going on.
    'He was like
you, dear, couldn't believe that we hadn't heard of her, kept on
asking if she's sunk and if the Captain had made it ashore. Why,
Alfred could see the boy wasn't going to get anywhere with us
just telling him there weren't no Royal
Blue around – so he's taken the boy out to the bay so he can
see for himself. Left me here to look after you, he did.'
    'So Pembrake
is okay?' Abby held tight onto that knowledge; it was something
right in the swell of wrongness.
    'Oh yes, good
strong lad you've got there miss.' The woman winked knowingly.
    Except Abby
wasn't sure what it was the woman thought she knew. Then it dawned
on her. 'Oh no… we aren't…' she felt a hot blush take to the corner
of her cheeks.
    'Oh really,'
the woman said disbelievingly. 'When Alfred found the two of you,
you was practically stretched on top of him you were. Alfred said
it looked as if you'd fought off the very sea to protect him then
fainted right there on the cliff. I said it was the sweetest thing
I'd ever heard. Young love is just so beautiful, me
dear.' The woman was speaking with such passion she'd clutched a
hand to her heaving bosom.
    Abby shook her
head meekly, every loud warning from Ms Crowthy about being with
boys going off in her mind, her blush only growing deeper with
every breath.
    'No need to be
embarrassed, child – I was young too once,' the woman sighed deeply
and fixed her eyes on a patch of stonewall longingly, before coming
back to herself and patting Abby's leg through the blanket.
'Anyhow, I'm sure they'll be back soon. You just rest here,' the
woman stood up and pulled the covers taut from where she'd been
sitting, 'and I'll go and fix you some soup and bread.'
    With the woman
gone, Abby cast her eyes around the unfamiliar room intently,
looking for some clue of where she was. It was strange. It looked
like other houses in Bridgestock. But somehow, from the quaint
furnishings to the colour of her bedspread – things seemed
strangely old, almost as if the room was decorated to remind the
occupants of the past.
    Abby pulled
her still warm mug closer into her chest, until she could feel the
warmth through her clothes, but the simple move was not enough to
ward off the chill that had been steadily spreading from her heart
since the woman had told her she had never heard of the Royal
Blue.
    For the first
time in her life, Abby felt the impossible urge to look at a clock.
Most witches go from birth to grave without ever wondering once
what the time is. Ms Crowthy had often pointed out that witches
have the most accurate of internal clocks and shouldn't be
bothering with nonsense watches. Watches, after all, break and
witches rarely do. Plus, you can't be trusting no manmade timepiece
– it'd only go lying to you.
    But Abby felt
this overpowering urge to look at a timepiece. A sundial, a watch,
a grandfather clock – it wouldn't matter, she just needed to know
the time.
    Time,
strangely, was not a topic Ms Crowthy was fond of. The only lessons
Abby had ever had on it, had been hushed warnings delivered in
front of a blazing fire, as if the Crone had been worried time
would creep in on a cold night and kill them all.
    It wasn't that
she was afraid of it, Ms Crowthy had sharply informed her, it was
that other people didn't fear it enough and that's what frightened
the socks off the old Crone. The most powerful stuff in the
universe, as she'd put it, and people just think they can catch it
in a clock and be done with it. Except you can't capture it, not in
a diary or a watch or a calendar, because while you are sitting
there and admiring the