Moreg seemed to have something stuck in her throat because she answered with a strained voice. ‘Er, yes, like your mother. Though most people who call themselves “seers” and say that they can see the future have no idea how it is really done, and often claim to have some connection to the “other side”, to the dead, who supposedly let them know when things are about to occur,’ she said with a disbelieving sniff. ‘True seers are, of course, very rare. But they have been known to read patterns in the smallest events, allowing them to see possible versions of the future. For instance, if they see a particular flower blooming in winter when it usually blooms in spring they can work out that a typhoon is coming in the summer.’
Willow stared blankly.
Moreg continued, ‘Unless they somehow encourage the last tree sparrow to build its nest before midnight on the spring equinox, for example. Do you understand?’
Willow made a kind of nod, mostly because it seemed like it was expected. But she didn’t really understand at all.
Moreg continued, not noticing Willow’s confusion. ‘Forgotten tellers, on the other hand, read people’s memories of the past, which come to them like visions when other people are around. They are, alas, rather unpopular compared to seers, and have very few friends, as you can imagine …’
Willow was puzzled. ‘Why’s that?’
‘Well, seers should be unpopular too. No one wants to be around someone who can predict their death … Yet so very few of them really can predict such things – so they make excellent friends as they always tell you just what you’d like to hear. Forgotten tellers, on the other hand, seldom, if ever, tell you what you’d actually like to hear. They tell things most people would prefer to forget, things you may wish to pretend never happened …’
Willow’s eyes bulged. ‘Really?’
Moreg nodded. ‘Oh yes. Take poor old Hercule Sometimes, a powerful forgotten teller. He was found drowned in a well after he walked past the Duke of Dittany and embarrassed him in front of the captain of the king’s army. The duke had been boasting that he had fantastic natural archery skills, and that the very first time he’d used a bow and arrow he’d hit the bull’s-eye. Apparently Hercule stopped in his tracks, slapped his knee, started chortling and said, “You mean when you fell over backwards in a field after you’d released the arrow and poked a bull in the eye with your bow?”’ Moreg chuckled. ‘See, he’d seen the duke’s memory of the day and, well, the duke was less than impressed, as you can imagine …’
‘But why did he tell the duke?’ gasped Willow.
Moreg’s lips twitched. ‘Couldn’t help himself – forgotten tellers see things as if they just happened. And they often blurt it out before they realise. They aren’t stupid – they’re just not always aware of what happens to them when they’re having a vision. Making for rather awkward social situations. As a result very few oubliers have lived to tell their tales and have an alarming capacity for turning up buried beneath people’s floorboards or at the bottom of wells. They often carry their own food for fear of being poisoned. They’re deeply suspicious of gatherings of people, partly because they get flooded with other people’s memories, and partly because the more visions they have the more chance they have of getting themselves into trouble by offending people. So the few that have survived are virtually hermits, who start running the minute they see anyone approaching …’
‘Oh,’ said Willow with a frown. ‘How are we going to find one, then, if they’re impossible to find?’
‘Tricky, I said,’ grinned Moreg. ‘But not impossible, if you know where to start.’
‘And you do?’
‘Oh yes. I’ve found in life that sometimes it’s useful to look back a little, to see when you need to go forward.’
‘Huh?’
‘We’re going to visit his last known address.’
‘Oh,’ said Willow, blinking at the ominous use of ‘we’.
‘I think you may need to pack a bag.’
‘Oh dear,’ Willow whispered.
Meanwhile, far away in a hidden stone fortress, where no magic had been able to penetrate for a thousand years, a figure stood alone in the tower and waited.
Waited for the raven, and the message that could lead to his downfall, betraying his plans before he was ready to seize power.
There were shadows beneath his eyes; sleep was a tonic he could ill afford.
But no raven came this day. Just as it hadn’t come the day before.
At last he allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief; at last he allowed himself to believe. It had worked.
He put the box inside his robes, keeping it close to his heart. It had done its job well. Never again would he let the witch get the better of him.
He left the tower, and found his faithful followers waiting on the winding stone staircase for the news. ‘She can’t remember?’ asked one, his face dark, hidden behind the hood of his robe. ‘Does that mean she won’t be coming?’
He gave a low, mirthless laugh. ‘Oh, she will. I have no doubt of that. But this time I will be ready.’
The Monster from Under the Bed
Willow spent the next quarter of an hour trying not to picture the look on her father’s face when he got home from his job as a farm manager for Leighton Apples and found her gone. Moreg, meanwhile, explored the Mosses’ ‘fascinating cottage garden’ in an attempt to give Willow a moment to pack in privacy.
In her small bedroom, which she shared with Camille, Willow took down Granny Flossy’s old green shaggy-hair carpetbag from atop the cupboard; it was made from the long hairs of a Nach mountain goat. Willow had often wondered if it was age that had turned it green, or if there really were green mountain goats …
Willow tried to think of what she might need.
She’d never spent the night away from the cottage before, not even to go to one of her mother’s travelling fairs. She’d somehow always been too young or, when she was old enough, too established as the ‘sensible one’ – which translated as ‘the one who was better suited to look after her father and Granny Flossy’.
Not that she minded looking after Granny. They looked after each other really. The two had been a pair since she’d come to live with them the year Willow turned
