Free Syren by Angie Sage Page B

stopped and turned to face him. “ What did you say?” she asked icily. The other witches shifted uncomfortably. When the Witch Mother spoke like that,there was going to be trouble. Wolf Boy stood his ground. He remembered what Aunt Zelda’s letter said: You may refuse anything human.
    “No,” he repeated firmly.
    “Witch Mother, let me feed the filthy little fleabrain to the Grim,” said Linda.
    The Witch Mother looked proudly at Linda. She had chosen a worthy successor. “Do it,” she said.
    Linda smiled in her special ghastly way that the Witch Mother loved so much.
    Wolf Boy saw Lucy go tense, like a wolverine waiting to pounce. He could see she was scanning the exits from the kitchen, but he had already done that, and he knew there were none—except down to the cellar. Two witches had positioned themselves at the kitchen door and Dorinda was lurking at the foot of the ladder. There was no way out.
    In front of Wolf Boy and Lucy was a pile of stinking garbage, which Linda now began to demolish. Wolf Boy gently tugged Lucy’s braids and they both stepped back from flying lumps of slimy turnip and decayed rabbit. Soon the kitchen was strewn with showers of trash, and Dorinda had a rotten chicken’s head peering out from the folds of her towel turban.All that was left of the pile was a compacted black crust of ancient vegetable peelings and bones.
    Linda surveyed her work with satisfaction. She turned to Lucy and pointed to the revolting mess. “Scrape it off, toad breath,” she hissed.
    Lucy did not move. Dorinda—who was terrified of Linda and always tried to be helpful—grabbed a spade from a pile of implements in the corner and handed it to Lucy. Linda glared at Dorinda; this was not how she had intended for Lucy to remove the mess. Lucy seized the spade, but Linda was no fool. She saw the way Lucy was eyeing her. “ I’ll do it,” Linda snapped, snatching away the spade.
    Linda’s angry shoveling revealed a pressed dead cat, a rat’s nest with three babies—which she flattened with the spade—and finally a massive rusted iron trapdoor.
    “Oooh,” Dorinda trilled rather nervously.
    Silence fell and everyone stared at the trapdoor. No one—not even the Witch Mother—knew what lay beneath. Of course they had all heard stories, and if the stories were only a little bit true it was certainly not going to be anything soft and cuddly. Suddenly, very dramatically—because Linda liked a bit of drama—Linda raised her arms and began to chant ina high wail, “Mirg…Mirg…Mirg ekawa, ekawa . Mirg…Mirg…Mirg— ekawaaaaaaaa !”
    Wolf Boy had learned enough from his time with Aunt Zelda to know that this was a Darke Reverse Chant. But even if he had not known, there was something about the weird, catlike way Linda sang the words that made the blood feel cold in his veins. In front of him, Lucy shivered. She glanced back at Wolf Boy, the whites of her eyes shining. For the first time she looked afraid.
    The chant died away, silence fell once more and an unpleasant feeling of expectation filled the air. Suddenly a tremor ran through the floor and Wolf Boy felt something shift. It was not a good feeling—he knew the rotten state of the Coven’s floorboards and joists. A small whimper escaped from Dorinda.
    Linda’s eyes shone with excitement. She took the spade and stabbed it at the edge of the trapdoor, dislodging a mummified black snake that was curled in the gap. The snake flew into the air and joined the chicken head on top of Dorinda’s towel. Dorinda froze, not daring to move. With the snake gone, Linda got the spade under the gap around the trapdoor; she gave it a powerful shove, and the trapdoor began to rise.
    Wolf Boy discovered he had been holding his breath. He breathed out, and when he breathed in again the smell of old fish and dirty water filled his nose. As the trapdoor rose, a swishing, gurgling sound emerged, and Wolf Boy realized that there was water below—deep water, by the