Free The Whitby Witches 3: The Whitby Child by Robin Jarvis Page B

that, she left Nelda's side and began hunting between the headstones, parting the long grass with her eager fingers, questing the gloom like a hound after a scent.
    Then, emitting a crow of delight, she called to Nelda and with a bony finger pointed at the shadowy ground.
    They were standing beside a grave that was smaller than the others and Nelda felt her skin crawl in revulsion at the callousness of her companion.
    "Behold!" Parry cried. "Peer through this, child, and see your salvation."
    With shaking hands, Nelda took the lens from her and put it to her eye.
    At first there was only a green darkness, and then as her eyes adjusted to the glass, her vision cleared and she drew her breath in sharply.
    There, growing from the centre of the grave was a small, sickly looking plant.
    Nelda lowered the glass and stared again but she could see no trace of the ugly weed.
    "The moonlight blinds your eyes to it," Parry whispered in her ear. "Not for all is the fruit of her pity."
    Nelda gazed through the lens a second time and studied the weed more closely.
    It was a vile and repugnant growth. The feeble stem was a pallid and ghostly grey—the colour of putrefying death and decay. Bunched around the base were clusters of tiny blade-shaped leaves and wispy threads of spiralling tendrils wound themselves about the frail stalk as though they were trying to strangle the sap from it.
    But the herb's most awful aspect was the flower. It too was leprously grey in hue, yet each of the five petals was shot through with a diseased vein of putrid red. Together they formed a spikey cup and from the centre of this loathsome vessel two long stamens wafted in the breeze.
    Suddenly Nelda covered her nose and mouth. From the flower a nauseating reek was rising and she had to gulp down the clean air to prevent herself being sick.
    "Is it not the daintiest bloom?" Old Parry softly sang. "See how the petals strive up to bathe in the moonlight, whilst the delicate creepers attempt to murderously choke and drag it down."
    "It repels me!" Nelda gagged. "I do not think I shall ever be rid of the stench! What vileness of Nature is it? What horror have you shown me this night? See how it flourishes upon that small grave—how far do the roots reach into the earth? On what soil do they feed?"
    "Don't you trouble to worry about that," the crone cackled, "for this bitter weed is your friend."
    "What do you mean?"
    "Exactly that—this tiny herb can save you. Hither have I brought many whose fears were no less than your own. The remedy to your woes is at hand. Simply taste one drop of the plant's juice and it is done. The life-leeching infant will be cast away and you shall live."
    Nelda stumbled against the weathered headstone. "What are you saying?" she cried aghast. "Stop! I shall hear no more!"

    Parry caught hold of the girl's hand and pulled it towards the sickening plant but she wrenched it free and backed away.
    "Be not too hasty," the crone told her. "'Tis but a moment's work. Pluck the blossom and lay a petal upon your tongue. Others have done it before you and lived to thank me afterwards."
    "Did you bring my mother here?" Nelda whispered in bewilderment.
    "I did," Parry replied, "though she was too stubborn and craven to partake of the juice. Come child, one morsel, that is all. I shall tell no one we came hither or what passed between us. Who shall know save thee and me of this night's work? Do you want to die in a torment of raving and be devoured by the salt which will blister through your veins?"
    Nelda shook her head slowly. She was terrified of dying in such agony so, with a quivering hand, she reached down.
    A cold sweat pricked her forehead and as the fetid odour assaulted her nostrils again she opened her fingers to take the flower from the ground.
    "Why hesitate?" Parry goaded. "Save yourself. Why must you both perish instead of one? That's it. Lift the herb, lift it."
    Nelda faltered; the flower was too disgusting to look at and the mere